Prøduct Näems
My wife found out today that Häagen Dazs is not in fact a foreign brand of ice cream. In fact, it was started in New York over 50 years ago and given a name intended “to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship” the owner hoped to emulate. Now, whatever the merits of that particular ice cream, foreign-sounding names are a popular strategy here in the US. In fact, it’s so popular that Wikipedia has an entire entry dedicated to it.
For anyone with a passing knowledge of languages in which the umlaut appears, the name seems unlikely to be genuine, but then again that’s not the point. These names are intended to appeal to non-native speakers, and to elicit a certain positive response. Indeed, as evidenced by the popular Japanese sport drink Pocari Sweat, the names can be good brands in their home country while eliciting a wholly undesirable response in native speakers.
Sometimes the names are completely made up, other times they are actually correct renditions of foreign names or terms, and sometimes they are “foreignized” versions or derivatives of names or brands. One of my favorite Pennsylvania beers is named Tröegs, after a nickname for the Trogner brothers who started the brewery.
What are your favorite foreign branding names?
GNU free documentation license, courtesy Wikipedia
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POSTED IN: Customs and Culture
2 opinions for Prøduct Näems
Mark
Jul 8, 2008 at 11:51 am
There ain’t no Hagen
There ain’t no Daz
There ain’t no Frusen
There ain’t no Gladge
There ain’t no guy named Steve at Steve’s
But there’s two real guys at Ben and Jerry’s.
Chris
Jul 8, 2008 at 12:22 pm
And there used to be a Breyer, but not any more.
Of course, Ben and Jerry are pretty well out of the picture these days too.
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