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TAIPEI: A senior Taiwanese official called on Thursday (March 18) for people to stop changing their name to “salmon” after dozens of people made the unusual decision 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 name change.
The cause of this sudden enthusiasm was a chain of sushi restaurants.
Under the two-day promotion, which ended on Thursday, any customer whose ID card contains “gui yu,” the Chinese characters for salmon, would be entitled to an all-you-can-eat sushi meal with five friends.
Taiwan allows people to officially change their name up to three times.
But Taiwanese officials were not amused.
“This type of name change not only wastes time, but creates unnecessary paperwork,” Vice Interior Minister Chen Tsung-yen told reporters, urging the public to “value administrative resources.”
“I hope everyone can be more rational about it.”
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Local media conducted 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 have already eaten more than NT $ 7,000 (US $ 235),” a university student surnamed Ma told the TVBS news channel in South America. Kaohsiung city.
Roughly translated, Ma’s new nickname means “Handsome, explosive salmon.”
“I changed my first name to ‘salmon’ and two of my friends did too,” a woman surnamed Tung told SET TV. “We will just change our names later.”
Other salmon-themed names reported in local media include “Salmon Prince,” “Meteor Salmon King,” and “Salmon Fried Rice.”
The United Daily News reported that a resident decided to add a record 36 new characters to his name, most of them seafood-themed, including abalone, crab and lobster characters.
