The Name Game

            The French are great at a lot of things; coming up with different ways of making mold edible, pretending to hate Americans, and driving aggressively to name a few. However, throughout my stay here in Paris, I have come to notice that there are a few things that the French are not so great at. Today, we shall explore the French inability to name things in a way that would make sense to a typical non-French person (i.e. me).

            Like the Japanese and the Koreans, the French love to use English words to name their stores, restaurants, and anything else that would benefit from having a cool-sounding American name. Unfortunately, like the Japanese and the Koreans, the French don’t pay particular attention to which English words they use.  The results can be pretty bizarre, and almost always hilarious to a native English speaker. For example, the French name for the much beloved table soccer game Foosball is (get ready for it): “Babyfoot”. You can imagine my surprise upon being asked by a 50-year old Frenchman if I would like to engage him in a game of Babyfoot. I was pretty sure that I was headed for some hot footsie action.

            The English names that the French give their stores and restaurants vary from the downright weird (a little trip to “The Big Royal Cheese” anyone?), to the much too obvious (I wonder what they sell at “Breakfast in America”?). Some of them just don’t make sense period, such as the little trinket store along the Seine called “French Bees Go!” You’re guess is as good as mine on that one.

            It’s not just the things that the French name in English that are weird. I recently discovered that here in France they call cotton candy “Barbe de Papa”, which translates to “Papa’s Beard”. Papa’s Beard seems like a really creepy name for a children’s treat, although I guess it’s not much worse than “cotton candy”. I really hope that in some country in this crazy world of ours they call it “fiber glass candy”, which, in my opinion, would be a lot more appropriate than “cotton”.

            Oddly enough, the things with the weirdest names seem to be supermarkets. Sure, the names “Monoprix” and “Carrefour” are alright, but they seem to be the exceptions rather than the norm. One of the supermarkets that I go to pretty frequently is called “Casino.” I originally stumbled in there thinking I was going to hit the slots and blackjack table, but ended up leaving with a bag of frozen vegetables and a very reasonably priced bottle of wine. The other two nearby supermarkets, both of them large-scale chains and not just corner markets, are simply called “Ed” and “%”. While Ed is a fine name for a human, to me it doesn’t really scream “groceries”, and last time I checked “%” was a symbol to be used when dealing with percentages.