Jan 12, 2021
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In a phenomenon that has been dubbed "Salmon Chaos" by local media, around 150 mostly young people flocked to government offices in recent days to officially register a change in their name.
A top Taiwanese official issued a plea on Thursday for people to stop changing their name to "salmon" after dozens made the unusual move to take advantage of a restaurant promotion.
In a phenomenon that has been dubbed "Salmon Chaos" by local media, around 150 mostly young people flocked to government offices in recent days to officially register a change in their name.
The cause of this sudden enthusiasm was a chain of sushi restaurants.
Under the two day promotion which ended Thursday, any customer whose ID card contained "Gui Yu" -- the Chinese characters for salmon -- would be entitled to an all-you-can-eat sushi meal along with five friends.
Taiwan allows people to officially change their name up to three times.
But Taiwanese officials were not amused.
"This kind of name-change not only wastes time but causes unnecessary paperwork," deputy interior minister Chen Tsung-yen told reporters as he urged the public to "cherish administrative resources".
"I hope everyone can be more rational about it," he added.
Local media ran interviews with people who took advantage of the promotion.
"I just changed my name this morning to add the characters 'Bao Cheng Gui Yu' and we already ate more than Tw$7,000 ($235)," a college student surnamed Ma told TVBS news channel in southern Kaohsiung city.
Roughly translated, Ma's new moniker means: "Explosive Good Looking Salmon".
"I've changed my first name to salmon and two of my friends also did," a woman surnamed Tung told SET TV. "We'll just change our names back afterwards."
Other salmon-themed names reported in local media included "Salmon Prince," "Meteor Salmon King" and "Salmon Fried Rice"
The United Daily News reported that one resident decided to add a record 36 new characters to his name, most of them seafood themed, including the characters for "abalone", "crab" and "lobster".
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I’m trying really hard not to be judgmental, but ——— really?
Guerrilla semiotics at its finest.
guerrilla onomastics
The Shame of My Name | Al Jazeera World
Filmmaker: Sameh Mejri
The Shame of my Name is the story of how some Algerians during the colonial period were forced to change their names by French colonial authorities at the time. Many of the names these Algerians were forced to carry hold demeaning and even vulgar meanings. The burden of these forced names is still carried by some Algerians to this day.
The names were in the local Algerian Arabic dialect and cover a range of vulgar words, including descriptions of bodily functions and genitalia. In this film, we meet several of these individuals whose families were forced to carry names which translate as "Arse," "Runny Nose" and even more offensive monikers. One contributor finds her name so offensive that she cannot bring herself to utter it. She has since changed her name. “I go home and rest my head on the pillow. I pray to God to rid me of that ugly name which had become a curse in my everyday life,” Messaoud Bakhti tells Al Jazeera. Bakhti’s forefathers were forcibly called "Gahroum" which in the Algerian dialect means "Arse" - a name having nothing to do with the heritage of his ancestors.
In 1882, 50 years after the French colonisation of Algeria, the French introduced the Civil Status Law. This allowed the authorities to impose approved names on Algerians arbitrarily. The decree stated that names would be in the “European style”, with a first name followed by the family name, which was quite different from traditional Muslim names. But beyond this, the law was frequently interpreted by some officials in ways that demeaned and insulted Algerians.
And assigning European-style names to Algerians, whether offensive or not, had another important side effect. It muddied the waters of land ownership, making it difficult for some Algerians to prove their rightful title to their land. All of which means that now the spotlight is on France, with many Algerians saying that it is the responsibility of the French government and theirs alone, to pick up the pieces of this particular French colonial policy. Some say a full apology is long overdue and that reparations should be paid. “Yes, the French colonisers are responsible for this. But I also believe post-independent Algeria is responsible too,” Amel Ali Lhadfi, a former victim of obscene naming, says. She believes Algerian authorities could make it easy to settle this problem if they wanted to or at least the process should not take such a long time. "Whoever decides to change their name has to realise it may take 10 years.”
Topic day #203: Guerrilla Onomastics II
Facebook Inc said on Saturday it was working to find out how Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s name appeared as “Mr Shithole” in posts on its platform when translated into English from Burmese, apologizing for any offence caused and saying the problem had been fixed.