I was wondering - while hoovering - whether some brand names crossed over to the language in japanese.
Like hoovering in the UK for vacuum cleaning or kleenex for tissue in french for example.
In France, for example, we call chocolate covered ice cream on a stick “eskimo” because of this brand, regardless of the actual brand.
Pistache is my favourite btw.
The equivalent would be calling all popsicles gari gari in Japan.
The all round winner is the Bic brand: they managed for french people to call ballpoint pens a “bic” and for british people to call them a “biro”.
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Belthazar:
ホッチキス
Whenever I hear this word, I immediately remember this song:
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I like it! It’s quite the mouthful too.
Leebo
July 5, 2020, 10:53pm
5
They are basically obsolete now, but the word for a pager or beeper was ポケベル from a brand name.
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Could not hear it so I cheated a bit:
Maybe I should staple my sparkly, shining wishes…
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Leebo
July 5, 2020, 10:57pm
7
And maybe it doesn’t count… But Otis actually had a trademark for the word エスカレータ in Japan before eventually dropping their claim to it. So technically it was a brand name and then generic in Japanese…
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Bad cat. Don’t eat the stapler.
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Ooh, I was looking at this a while back! This list has a few. It includes the stapler one; I wonder if this phenomenon happens more with loanwords.
I screenshotted some more.
(Kleenex for tissue is in English too!)
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So far, it seems that way. Maybe someone with an understanding of language evolution will enlighten us!
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system
July 5, 2021, 11:46pm
11
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