While I was reading through BoingBoing.net, I came across a website called "Adult Engrish", which documents the comical misfortunes of an English teacher's life in Japan. As far as I can tell, the website is not associated with Engrish.com.
The website's logo [seen above] has a hanko (traditional Japanese stamp, also known as 圖章 in Chinese) with 栗須 in red. One of my Japanese associates, Aaron, recognized the characters as "kuri-su, which might be a kind of crappy kanji for the name 'Chris'."
But if the characters are read individually:
栗 = chestnut tree, chestnuts; surname
須 = must, have to, necessary; moment; whiskers
Often, if a teacher comes to Japan with a company, they'll have a hanko made for them prior to their arrival. I've seen hanko made with misspellings of their names in romanji, kanji that envoked strange pronounciations of their names, etc.
ReplyDeleteChristy (Kiryu Japan)
I think "English" could be pronounced (in Chinese) ying-guo-li-xu: that'd be 英国栗須.
ReplyDeleteIf it was done in the 洋涇浜 (pidgin), but I have never seen "英国栗須" used as a phonetically guide to the word "English".
ReplyDeleteBoth of those characters (kuri and su) show up in native Japanese names, so it's not too much of a stretch to apply them to the pronunciation of a foreign name as well.
ReplyDeleteFar from being crappy, Kurisu is exactly the way "Chris" would be transcribed/pronounced in Japanese. The guy probably adopted the particular characters since 栗須 is an existing Japanese surname and the hanko (family seal) would be stocked in most shops.
ReplyDeletenot that this is the same case at all, but it reminds me of that manga gto, wherein onizuka wrote out よろしく (yoroshiku) as 夜露死苦. what a horrible kanji-fication.
ReplyDeletereminds me of oruchuban ebichu and the whole "kuri to risu"/"clitoris" thing
ReplyDeleteOTOH one could reverse the characters and have "Necessary Chestnuts", which would be a great name for a band...
ReplyDeletewell kurisu is probably a transliteration for Chris
ReplyDelete