What's in a name?

This entry contains adult language and bitter rants. You have been warned. :)

During recent years sushi has seen a huge increase in popularity in Sweden. I do like sushi and naturally this trend makes me happy. But I’ve run into some awkward names for sushi restaurants in Stockholm. Check this out.

Sushi restaurant #1

Esa sushi.

According to my Japanese dictionary, the word “esa” is written 餌 and means fodder or animal feed, something you give your pet or to a bird in a pond. “Esa” would not be used when talking about human food. Weird name for a restaurant, isn’t it?

Why did they choose this name? It can’t be on purpose, right? No restaurant owner would regard their customers as animals. I guess ignorance is the only explanation, but the name Fodder sushi is just so ironic.

Sushi restaurant #2Ashima sushi.

Ashima doesn’t really mean anything in Japanese. However, “ashi” could be 足 or 脚, which means leg or foot. And “ma” could be 間, which has many meanings, one of them being space between. So with just a little bit of imagination this restaurant would therefore be called Sushi between legs.

In the window of Ashima sushi there is a bunch of Japanese signs written, as decoration. These are indeed real signs but half of them are either backwards or rotated 90 degrees and they have almost no meaning. I say almost, because to two big ones in the middle (the rotated ア and the ホ) is read “aho”. That is very close to “ahou”, which means fool or idiot. Ok…

Sushi restaurant #3Sushi bar ting ting.

The sound “ti” is in Japanese equivalent to “chi”. In a similar way are the sounds “ng” and “n” pretty much the same. “Ting ting” would therefore sound like “chin chin”, which is willy or dick in Japanese. I have actually asked the owners of Sushi bar ting ting why they chose this name. It turns out that “ting ting” means something you can do every day, in Chinese. I guess the intentions were good.

There is a rather entertaining homepage called engrish.com that publishes photos of mistakes in English made by (for the most part) Japanese people. To me, these restaurant names are just as funny. And it seems there are still some great opportunities for translators to make a difference.

Maybe I should change career? I could be working with hilarious stuff like this every day. Wouldn’t that be something?

Ok, that’s it.
Take care!