Since when is Gilgenbach Offensive?
Matt posted in Xbox 360 on July 17th, 2008

I noticed the Xbox Live profiles had a new name option. Well, it’s new to me, but probably not that new. I don’t normally change my profile info, but I was checking out my new Gears of War 2 icon pack. (As you can see, I settled on the Borat picture I downloaded a while back.)  I figured privacy be darned! I’ll enter my real name. So, I type in Matt Gilgenbach. I get the following message: “Your name contains a word or phrase that isn’t allowed”. I try just Gilgenbach. Same error. Maybe I’m missing something, but how the heck could Gilgenbach be profane? I tried all sorts of combinations and deduced that “genb” is the offending string. Unfortunately, they don’t allow Gilgen-bach or Gilgen bach because I guess it still contains the worst of all four letter words “genb”. Does anyone know what a “genb” is? Google only has 216,000 hits for it, and none seem the least bit profane.

There have been other people who have run into problems with their real names. Jeff Putz ran into a similar problem, but perhaps someone would be insulted when being called a putz. Richard Gaywood’s gametag RichardGaywood was disallowed even though that was his real name. I can see how that sounds sexual, and perhaps someone is offended (although I can’t imagine the person reporting Mr. Gaywood hadn’t heard worse over the voice chat). Now, I wouldn’t say I necessarily agree with their censorship, but I can understand that they are attempting to make a wholesome family friendly Live experience. I don’t think anyone who thinks it’s family friendly has actually played Live because I was impressed that I went a whole hour from when I first played on Live to when I was first called a “fag”. (Please note that I don’t ordinarily use that word, but I felt like my Live experience wasn’t complete until my sexuality came into question)

If someone knows how one could possibly be offended by Gilgenbach or just “genb”, please let me know. Something even stranger is that I can put “Gilgenbach” in my bio, and it seems to be okay with that.