Thursday, August 5, 2010

What's in a name?

I love looking at the names of stores and various other facilities here. They often use a curious combination of English and Russian/Ukrainian. By which I mean, they may take English (or other foreign) words and ad them into their name, such as Anschlag (a grocery store, also German for "attack") or RoDent (not a dentist I would want to visit). There's also our corner store "Boaz".
And then there are the names which mix Latin and Cyrillic letters/words, often one word in one language and the other in the other language. Or occasionally a letter here or there that doesn't match the rest. As in the case of Piranha, which has a Russian "я" (ya) somewhere in the middle (I think like this Pirяna or possibly Piranя) and is a men's hair salon. Yana and Anya are Russian names, but still wondering who came up with that name and who goes to that salon? I'm not sure I'd want to get my hair cut at a place named after a flesh-eating fish.

On my recent trip to Lviv I came across a couple of gems that made me chuckle.
The first: Mini bite--children's clothing. "Mini" I get..."bite"? scares me a little. Just wondering what the thinking was behind that one?

The second: The Grill: steak, wok and roll...just fascinates me all around. The use of the English article "the" with grill--they don't have articles in Russian and Ukrainian so it is totally superfluous; then the steak, wok and roll part. I've heard of wok and roll restaurants, but "steak, wok and roll"? That was a new one to me and made me chuckle. I didn't go in, but the sign sure made me want to!

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