A top rated Taiwanese official issued a plea on Thursday for individuals to quit altering their name to “salmon” immediately after dozens produced the uncommon move to take benefit of a restaurant promotion.
In a phenomenon that has been dubbed “Salmon Chaos” by neighborhood media, about 150 mainly young individuals flocked to government offices in current days to officially register a modify in their name.
The bring about of this sudden enthusiasm was a chain of sushi restaurants.
Under the two day promotion which ended Thursday, any consumer whose ID card contained “Gui Yu” — the Chinese characters for salmon — would be entitled to an all-you-can-consume sushi meal along with 5 buddies.
Taiwan permits individuals to officially modify their name up to 3 occasions.
But Taiwanese officials have been not amused.
“This kind of name-change not only wastes time but causes unnecessary paperwork,” deputy interior minister Chen Tsung-yen told reporters as he urged the public to “cherish administrative resources”.
“I hope everyone can be more rational about it,” he added.
Local media ran interviews with individuals who took benefit 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 ($235),” a college student surnamed Ma told TVBS news channel in southern Kaohsiung city.
Roughly translated, Ma’s new moniker suggests: “Explosive Good Looking Salmon”.
“I’ve changed my first name to salmon and two of my friends also did,” a lady surnamed Tung told SET Television. “We’ll just change our names back afterwards.”
Other salmon-themed names reported in neighborhood media incorporated “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, such as the characters for “abalone”, “crab” and “lobster”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Spuzz employees and is published from a syndicated feed.)