Malta’s contestant at this year’s Eurovision contest will have to change the title and lyrics of her song owing to the phonetic resemblance between the Maltese word for “singing” and the c-word, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has ruled.

Miriana Conte, 23, will represent Malta at the five-day music event in Basel, Switzerland, on 13 to 17 May after winning the Maltese song contest last month with her song Kant.

While kant, from the Latin cantus, does mean “singing” and does not have a rude meaning in Maltese, the play on the English slang word for female genitalia is clearly intentional.

The chorus of Conte’s empowerment anthem contains the phrase “serving kant” – a queer or drag slang phrase roughly meaning “to express boldness”.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Conte said she had been notified that the EBU had ruled against her using the word “kant”.“While I’m shocked and disappointed, especially since we have less than a week to submit the song, I promise you this: the show will go on – Diva NOT down,” she wrote.

The EBU did not respond to a request for comment.

The Times of Malta reported that the EBU had made its decision after a complaint by the BBC. Scott Mills, who fronts BBC Radio’s Eurovision coverage, said last month on his breakfast show, “we can’t talk about Malta’s one, at all” owing to the BBC’s rules on the use of strong language. “We definitely can’t play a clip of it … ever.”

Broadcasters participating in the world’s largest live music event have until 10 March to formally submit their entries and are usually given a further deadline to modify their entry if a song is considered in breach of the EBU’s code of conduct.

Last year, the EBU allowed the Israeli contestant, Eden Golan, to compete in the music event only after changing the title of the song from October Rain to Hurricane. Golan’s song originally contained the lyrics, “They were all good children, every one of them”, but this was thought to be a reference to the victims of the 7 October Hamas attacks, breaking Eurovision’s rules on political neutrality.