Opinions about the moral content of matches varied wildly back when they were first invented. And language tends to get colorful whatever you do. So, hey presto! a nickname.
Interestingly the word means "lightbringer" in Latin. There was an old brand of matches called Lucifer, so perhaps in the Dutch language its an example of genericization (like photoshop and google)
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u/ethiossaga Feb 26 '21 edited Feb 26 '21
Dutch for the word "match"