It's Swedish(?) for "blue shark." I don't know how, or why, but Ikea started selling stuffed blue sharks and they got incredibly popular in the trans community and is like their mascot.

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 10 points 9 hours ago

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 17 points 19 hours ago

Yeah it's written Blåhaj, blue shark.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 27 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Blahaj is a shark.

More specifically a stuffed shark plushie sold by IKEA.

The word supposedly means blue shark, or shark in Swedish, but I don't speak the language, so take that as you will.

Also supposedly, the shark being a rather gentle pastel blue and pink, which matches the trans flag, it became a favorite symbol within segments of the trans community, a sort of mascot. While I can't guarantee that's why it became a symbol, it is definitely popular among the trans community. Enough so that I don't know any trans people irl that don't partake in the knowledge and joke of it, and we're half a day's drive from the nearest IKEA store.

It's a fairly popular gift for trans folks that are coming out, or making a significant step in transition, or even just because.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 8 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Well, it is pronounced "blow high" (or something pretty close). And to continue the fun facts, English used to have the word "haye" which is related to the Swedish word, but we stopped using it in favour of "shark". Since it sounds like a greeting (as does "high" for that matter) as well as a common feedstock for animals (hay), we'd probably use the alternative "hayefish", with or without the 'e', if we hadn't dropped it altogether.

[–] hyves@feddit.nl 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

In Dutch, "haai" (shark) sounds very similar to "hi" (the English word), same for "hooi" (hay) and "hoi" (hi). Which leads to this hilarious comic I saw once where a shark meets a bale of hay ^edit:^ ^somehow^ ^I^ ^typed^ ^bay^ ^of^ ^hale^

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 4 points 12 hours ago

That's what German did. They call it Haifisch.

[–] DaseinPickle@leminal.space 7 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Blå = blue Haj = shark

Blue shark. Also known as the great blue shark in English.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago

Blau Hai, blauer Hai.

Guess Haj/Hai is not that intuitive for an English speaker.

[–] TGhost@lemm.ee 19 points 21 hours ago

It's Working for me,

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 15 points 21 hours ago

No, it just smells like it.

[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 8 points 21 hours ago

I was getting error messages when I first saw your post and checked a few minutes ago, but it looks like it's back online now.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

You mean down and the last outage was 5 days ago.

[–] testing@fedia.io -3 points 19 hours ago

as blahaj.zone and lemmy.blahaj.zone run on different servers, and both were unreachable at the time of my op, i really meant dead, not down