東京ばな奈 (TOKYO BANANA)
Do y'all know this popular souvenir from Tokyo?
It's a soft, fluffy cake filled with a sweet banana custard!
But today I wanted to talk about the name itself. In English, it's pretty straightforward, but in Japanese, there's a bit more to it.
Typically, banana would be written fully in katakana (バナナ) or maybe full hiragana (ばなな). But for the name of this snack, it's written in a mix of hiragana and kanji: ばな奈。
Today I learned that it is because they wanted it to sound not just like the fruit "banana" but to also make it sound like a girl's name. In Japanese, a lot of girls' names end in the kanji 奈（な）、like 杏奈（あんな） and 玲奈（れいな）。
Reina-chan! Anna-chan! Banana-chan! Cute.
That is also, apparently, why they have the ribbon on the banana.
