Salmon Chaos

Extracts from an AFP report:

A top Taiwanese official issued a plea on Thursday for people to stop changing their name to “salmon” after dozens made the unusual move to take advantage of a restaurant promotion.

In a phenomenon that has been dubbed “Salmon Chaos” by local media, around 150 mostly young people flocked to government offices in recent days to officially register a change in their name.

The cause of this sudden enthusiasm was a chain of sushi restaurants.

Under the two day promotion which ended Thursday, any customer whose ID card contained “Gui Yu” — the Chinese characters for salmon — would be entitled to an all-you-can-eat sushi meal along with five friends.

Taiwan allows people to officially change their name up to three times.

Local media ran interviews with people who took advantage of the promotion.

“I just changed my name this morning to add the characters ‘Bao Cheng Gui Yu’ and we already ate more than Tw$7,000 (US$235),” a college student surnamed Ma told TVBS news channel in southern Kaohsiung city.

Roughly translated, Ma’s new moniker means: “Explosive Good Looking Salmon”.

Other salmon-themed names reported in local media included “Salmon Prince,” “Meteor Salmon King” and “Salmon Fried Rice”

The United Daily News reported that one resident decided to add a record 36 new characters to his name, most of them seafood themed, including the characters for “abalone”, “crab” and “lobster”.