In English, "Ä" is an "A" with a diaresis modifier: ¨, and is treated as an A for all purposes.
In German, "Ä" is the umlaut of "A", and it's not quite a letter of the German alphabet, but also not quite a regular A.
In Swedish, "Ä" is a unique letter of the alphabet which makes the "applet" jokes completely nonsensical. If the ship had been named "Epplet", would you have made an applet joke? You're only making the connection because you literally can't see the ¨.
Funilly enough if you looked at the rolls that were presented in the press conference of which battles the ship was a part of it is spelled "Eplet" there. We didn't have a consistent way of spelling things in Sweden until the 1800s.
My fave German/English confusion is still the word 'Mist' -- I'll never get over hearing how Rolls Royce couldn't understand how their luxury car, the Silver Mist, sold so poorly in Germany
...implausible? Really?
Ha! You can't tell me you've never thought about what you'd name things if you were warped into the past and worked as a Swedish shipwright.
Like, it's just too tempting to troll 21st-century conspiracists with anachronistic ship names, of course it would be a thing you'd do.
Call this the 'anthwarpic principle' (no I don't care) and by 2022 epistemological standards, it's as likely to be real as anything else
OK, fine, downvote me, you cowards