Taking the Piss

Who’s minding the store at Target? A week ago Consumerist reported that the retailer was selling a plus-size dress in a color unflatteringly called Manatee Gray. (A manatee is also known as a sea cow.) This week there’s been a cross-lingual dustup over a sandal style called “Orina,” which means “urine” in Spanish.

 

Image from Yahoo Shine. Target quickly removed the product page and is said to be renaming the style.

 

“Does no one speak Spanish at Target HQ or have access to this thing we call Google?” asked Consumerist reporter Mary Beth Quirk. No and no, apparently. Target’s initial defense was that “orina” means “peaceful” in Russian. As though Russian rather than Spanish were the second-most-spoken language in the United States, after English.

I learned about Target’s number-one problem via a tweet from Mighty Red Pen, who also sent me a link to Yahoo Shine’s coverage of the story. Full marks to senior editor Lylah M. Alphonse, whose recounting of other notable naming gaffes sets the record straight on the Chevy Nova “no-go” myth.

Target isn’t the only business with Orina issues. A similar etymological fallacy led to the naming of Café Orina in the Bay Area city of Concord, California.

 

When Maura Storace sent me the photo, she commented, “I wonder if the coffee they serve is amber-colored?”

The café’s About Us page includes this earnest explanation:

Meaning of Orina
Its source is Eirene, a Greek name meaning “Peace.”

Narrative: This was the name of the Greek goddess of peace. Until the 20th century, it was commonly pronounced in three syllables (i-REE-nee).

Very nice, but there are almost 700,000 native Spanish speakers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and only a relative handful of Greek speakers.

Moral: Check several bilingual dictionaries before committing to a lovely-sounding exotic name. And know your market.

And as long as this post is already in the toilet, here’s Kmart’s new TV spot, which – incongruously for a retailer not known for creative marketing – takes positive glee in its potty humor. The much-repeated tagline is “Ship my pants.”

 

 

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For more on the British idiom “taking the piss” – not to be confused with “taking a piss” – read this.

Comments

[Andy DiPalma]

I just have to tell you about how they had to modify some US products for sale in Italy. The first is a person: Fess Parker of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone fame is not called "Fess" in Italy. "Fess" in Italian dialects means "dummy or sucker".

Salem cigarettes are called "Reynos" in Italy since "salem" is Latin for salt.

When I was there in 1967 they were heavily advertising a soap bar called "Fairy". It was a source of much amusement with me and my American friends.

[Dave G]

Just tried Google Translate, entering Orina. Google came back with "Spanish - detected", and gave the translation as urine.

So, at least for this one, you don't even have to guess at what language to check.

[Lane]

And how do they explain how they got "Orina" from "Irene"? In Modern Greek Irene is still a perfectly good name, and they pronounce it ee-REE-nee as far as I know. In Ancient Greek it would have been ay-REE-nay. But Orina?

[Lois Furry]

This reminds me of Biggby Coffee. The company had started business in 1995 as Beaners Coffee with a single store in East Lansing, Michigan. Meant to celebrate coffee beans the name also referenced a derogatory slur on Mexican Americans. It was clear that the name had to change. To voluntarily re-brand a company that had grown to include over 133 franchises took courage.

The outcome? They changed the name, and the company continues to grow and expand; no longer held back by a name with unintended meanings.

[maura storace]

Thanks for the mention, Nancy!

[tanita]

*groan*
Honestly, sometimes it seems as if they not only believe there are no Spanish speakers in the Bay Area, there's the belief that they know no grammar - I can't tell you the number of "el" somethings that should be "la." Moral: If you're going to use a language, USE IT GRAMMATICALLY. Amazingly, the same goes for English. Or Greek...

[malkie]

I noticed a bar of soap on the shelf at our local supermarket, and did a double-take: the brand name is "Placenta".

Yes, it's true that (http://placentasoap.org/) "The placenta soap’s main ingredient came from plant placenta which is in the buds of different types of herbs."

However, I suspect that a fair number of people who look at the name on the label will have a reaction that will not be overcome by visiting the manufacturer's website.