Can you think of any other products that have been renamed because people kept saying it wrongly?

Question

I was doing a lot of bar work when they launched Appletise in the late 80's(without the R) but people always used to ask for AppletiseR - now I see it advertised on TV they've added the R officially.

Any other examples you can think of?

Answer 1

This happens all the time with words and names. Maria Sharapova's surname should be pronounced "Sharra-Poh-Va", not Sharra-Pova. And half the English now pronounce the word Wrath as "raff" instead of "roff". These are Americanisations. There is also the spread of mispronunciations due to media "democracy" where any bugger can get on TV no matter how vocally incompetent they are. So we get the letter H pronounced as "hache" instead of the correct "ache" and we seem to be getting an increase in dialect words, which is fine on local TV, but ridiculous on national TV, as a majority of people won't understand the meaning of the word. After all the point of language is communication

Answer 2

Not a product exactly..but Sainsbury the food retailers have become Sainburys because the public always added the 's' automatically...

And 'Jif' cleaning fluid became 'Cif' (pronounced Sif) in the UK because the 'J' didn't work in other languages (e.g. Spanish BUT nevermind that it NOW sounds like a Venereal disease to the Brits...added: I now see that Cif has already been mentioned in responses above)

I did spot a 'cheesy snack' packet on sale early 80's by Spanish snack manufacturers that was called 'Bum' whilst on vacation...never saw that on sale in UK!

And then there was the famous 'misnamed' car model Vauxhall/Opel had called the 'Nova'...which in Spanish means 'doesn't go'! So wasn't ideal for encouraging sales!

Answer 3

The Swedish cement company Skånska (pronounced skawn-ska) officially changed their name in the '80s to Skanska, because everyone who was not Scandinavian (the only languages where the å exists) pronounced it like that. Just to remove that small circle above the a cost them millions of dollars - letterheads, visit cards, invoice paper, building insignia, cement bags etc.
Very few people are prepared to take the trouble to get a product name right. Where a foreign name is involved, people seem to thinks "It's foreign, so I'm bound to get it wrong", and then they do, even when the pronunciation is easy. How many times have you heard Mitsubishi pronounced Mitsubooshi? Isn't Mitsu-bishi (it means 3 diamonds) easy enough? The German manufacturer of shaver and curlers and kitchen devices called Braun, is pronounced Brown and it is the German word for brown .... so why does everyone in UK and America called it Brawn? Isn't Brown simple enough, for God's sake? There is an e on the end of Porsche - it is pronounced. So the name more or less rhymes with "divorce yer" - it is NOT Porsh. Is that really so difficult?

Answer 4

We had a cleaning stuff that was called Jif. Internationally no one could really pronounce the J it seemed.. Now they named it cif instead... I see everyone above blaming the europeans for that... well we dutch people could pronounce it just fine and hate the new name... I still prefer jif... I think the spanish were the only ones who couldnt pronounce the J the way we did.... :)

Answer 5

The classis is the car that SHOULD have been the Mitsubishi Stallion - but because an American importer got the name by telephone from a Japanese official, it had to be re-named the Starion. Stupid Irriot!!!

Answer 6

Generally speaking products are not renamed because people describe them incorrectly, they are renamed because by so doing it raises minor confusion about the product in the mind of the consumer. This forces the consumer to think about and therefore remember the product. It is called marketing.

Answer 7

Fury mentions Oil of Ulay/Olay...When it was first marketed, the advert (in magazines) used to say "pronounced ooo-lay".
This later changed because everyone said U-lay instead. Then it changed again!!!

Dime bars have now become Daim bars (which was the name given to them in other European countries - Tenerife sold them as such years ago)...

I know it hasn't altered, but most British people say "Nestles" but the correct way for Nestlé is "Nestlay".

Answer 8

Apparently the Mitsubishi Pajero had to be renamed in Spain as "pajero" means something quite different there, beginning with a W and ending with an R.

Answer 9

The UK stationery company Platignum used to pronounce the name as it is written, though everyone outside of the company called it "Platinum". Then, about 15 years ago, they got fed up with the common pronounciation and changed it back to being pronounced Platignum!

Answer 10

"study have discovered that there is not any correlation between unlawful immigration and crime. if truth be told Incarceration fee for community-born adult men contained in the 18-39 age team replaced into 5 situations larger than for overseas-born adult men interior an similar age team." *sigh* you're misinterpreting the documents. You mistake "overseas-born" and "unlawful immigrant" as equivalent words. you're knowledgeable and worldly sufficient to understand more advantageous positive. There are 2 important adjustments between criminal and unlawful immigrants. First, criminal immigrants had to bypass a criminal heritage verify before getting an immigrant visa or eco-friendly card. they might later lose the fairway card and get deported if convicted of certain crimes, yet screening for previous criminal convictions guarantees that criminal immigrants as a set are very regulation-abiding. unlawful immigrants have not been screened, second, there are socioeconomic and ethnic adjustments between criminal and unlawful immigrants. Asians contain a compulsory minority of criminal immigrants yet very few unlawful immigrants, and almost all Asian unlawful immigrants are visa overstayers who had to bypass some type of screening to get a visa to come back the following. Asians have the bottom incarceration costs of any racial/ethnic team contained in the U. S.. locate some documents on unlawful immigrants in simple terms as against voters and then we are going to communicate.

Answer 11

All renaming is because the Europeans can't hack our language. It is because some words have different meanings across the Continent, by the way you can still buy JIF in New Zealand, which of course is not dictated to by unelected prats in Brussels.