VietNamNet Bridge – It is now a growing tendency of giving foreign names to products and services. It is because the product and service providers believe that foreign names would help made their products more luxurious.

There are numerous foreign names or foreign words on the sign boards hung over the restaurants or hotels, schools or cinemas, stores or shopping malls in big cities. Foreign names have been given to businesses, real estate projects, apartment blocks or private shops.

Especially, Vietnamese parents now like giving English names to their children, even though they are still living in Vietnam.

The owners of the products and services have their own reasons to give foreign names to their products and services. However, in the eyes of marketing experts, naming in English would not bring high advertisement effects.

Difficult to read, difficult to remember

A lot of people believe that in the context of Vietnam’s deeper integration into the world, it is necessary for Vietnamese to “westernize” everything and to learn English to get used to the western style.

Nearly all real estate projects, from small to big, have foreign names, which causes inconvenience to buyers, especially when the names are long and difficult to remember. Centana Grand Saint Simeon project in Ba Ria – Vung Tau is an example.

Meanwhile, some real estate developers prefer the names with 50 percent of words in English and the other 50 percent in Vietnamese, such as Berriver Long Bien in Hanoi. Especially, in some cases, since the people who give names to real estate projects are not really good at English, they “invented” strange names like “D’. Palais de Louis.” And no one knows what “D’” means.

Naming in English has become in fashion. Even the investors who once gave Vietnamese names to their projects, have changed their mind and changed the projects’ names.

Him Lam Company, for example, once named its project “Khu dan cu cao cap Him Lam Kenh Te” (Him Lam Kenh Te high end residential quarter) in district 7 in HCM City. And a new residential quarter has appeared in the new urban area – Him Lam Riverside.

Not only high end apartment blocks, but the residential quarters for low income earners also bear foreign names. Blue House in Da Nang City is an example. However, it seems that the foreign name does not have much significance to many people. There is an ad piece on Internet “can ban chung cu 50 m2 Blue Huos” (50 square meter apartment at Blue Huos on sale).

The State’s intervention needed?

Nguyen Van Khang, a philology professor, said that the state needs to come forward to improve the current situation, emphasizing that Vietnamese is the national language which must be respected.

Khang has suggested that the state should build up and enact a law on the commercial naming.

The current laws only stipulate that Vietnamese names must be given to businesses. The companies’ foreign names must be printed in smaller capital letters than the Vietnamese names on the sign boards at the companies’ headquarters or on all relating documents.

Meanwhile, there has been no regulation relating to the naming of products. No state management agency has been assigned of supervising the law implementation or imposing fines on violators.

Marketing experts have also pointed out that one should think twice before giving names to his products and services, because when customers forget the foreign names, the products would be unsalable.

Nhip Cau Dau Tu