Newegg users with the name "Mohamed" will be able to leave their notes and comments on products on the site, after they were banned for 15 years.
Newegg is an online retailer of goods including computers and consumer electronics. It is headquartered in California.
The online retailer has revised its language filtering technology, after learning it had banned one of the world's most popular names for 15 years.
The issue was exposed by user Mohammed Al-Tayyar, a government employee in Kuwait, who discovered it after trying to post a product review on Newegg.
The pilot said, "I was writing a review on the Newegg website, and the system identified my name (Muhammad) as "unacceptable words - offensive language." The pilot tweeted on Wednesday about the topic, sharing a picture of the error message, asking, "Is my name offensive, Newegg?"
Other users quickly retweeted the tweet, suggesting that the pilot's experience wasn't just an unfortunate mistake.
Speaking to Mashable, the pilot said he was trying to make up his mind about a laptop and storage unit he had bought for his 6-year-old daughter, which she was using for distance learning, when he was struck by Newegg putting up a warning sign To his name being a bad word.
The Mashable report says, "For Al-Tayyar, the warning was yet another example of the devastating and pervasive nature of Islamophobia, in which fear and hatred towards Arabs and Muslims cause even names in their culture to be considered questionable, inflicting undeniable harm on these communities. It's a serious issue, and it's much bigger than this single incident."
"Every time I watch a movie in the media or video games...all Arabs and Muslims are shown as evil and stupid thieves," said the pilot, noting that the Arab is often portrayed negatively as "in the desert with camels." "Now the system is [telling me] that I have to change my name?" he added.
The pilot told Mashable that he had emailed Newegg regarding the matter, but had not yet received a response.
However, NewEgg quickly responded to the tweet, apologizing and saying that "Mohammed" has now been removed from the list of banned words. According to Newegg, the name has been on the blacklist since it was first added in 2006. The company said it banned religious terms being misused, including "Jesus" and "God".
Words were added when used inappropriately on our site, so it's possible that there was an incident at the time that led to this... Regardless, we feel this is wrong and are updating the list as we speak," the official Newegg Twitter account wrote. Our apologies to you.
However, the pilot wondered why his common name had been added to the ban list in the first place. "Muhammad is a name not a religion," he said in a message to Mashable. "Even the name Jesus is a common name in Arab countries (Jesus). It is a name. It should not be banned... You can block a person's IP address if they post something, or You should review it before that, but ban one of the world's most popular names since 2006?!".
"It's unfortunate that others have misused this word in the past enough to add it to the list," Newegg tweeted, "We apologize... you have nothing but love from us."
