C6PO? Is Threepio naughty in France?

So, I'm watching Empire Strikes Back tonight with the audio set to French, and I notice that the characters in the film are referring to Threepio as "6PO." Weird.

A Google search confirms that it's in common use on French pages:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=C6PO&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

And here's a French blogger referring to "R2D2, C6PO et la princesse Léia":

http://www.arlooo.net/index.php/2005/

So that makes me wonder if saying the letters C3PO in French comes out as one of those letters-to-sentence jokes like OICUP or OU812. When you say C3PO in French it's phonetically pronounced "say twa pay oh." The first half of that is phonetically exact to "C'est toi" which is French for "It's you." I wonder what "pay oh" turns out to be and what the full sentence translates to. I've done some searching, but have come up with nothing.

There's actually a well-known example of this letters-to-sentence thing in French: the dada painting by Marcel Duchamp called "LHOOQ." When you say the letters in the title in French, you say the French equivalent of "She has a hot butt" ("Elle a chaud au cul.")

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~djr4r/LHOOQ.html

So, does C3PO's name translate into something naughty or rude in French? Does anyone here know? I'd love to know why his name had to be changed for the French version.

 

C3PO means nothing in french... "6PO" is used instead on french pages because in the french version of the OT, they say 6PO. I don't know why they haven't keep the same name for the french dubblage, but notice that lot of names have been changed for the french version (Darth Vader become Dark Vador, Millenium Falcon become Condor Millénaire )
but in the french version of TPM, they say C3PO...
you should ask the french Star Wars translators to know why they change names...

 

C3PO means nothing in french...

That's not entirely true. In experimenting with the translation, I came up with "C'est toi pais au" which means "It is you feed with." Literally, that makes no sense, but could it be a French colloquialism that I'm not familiar with?

"6PO" is used instead on french pages because in the french version of the OT, they say 6PO. I don't know why they haven't keep the same name for the french dubblage, but notice that lot of names have been changed for the french version (Darth Vader become Dark Vador, Millenium Falcon become Condor Millénaire )

There would have to be some reason beyond just being a whim, however.

but in the french version of TPM, they say C3PO...

Très intéressant!

you should ask the french Star Wars translators to know why they change names...

I wish I could. I'm still hoping someone here on these boards knows why.