Taiwan orders people to stop changing their name to ‘Salmon’ after 150 people do it to qualify for free all-you-can-eat sushi
- Sushi chain Sushiro announced promotion for anyone legally named ‘Salmon’
- Anyone with the name qualified for free, all-you-can-eat sushi this week only
- 150 people, largely students, rushed to change their names to qualify for deal
- But officials failed to see the joke, and ordered people to stop wasting their time
Taiwanese officials have been forced to plead with citizens to stop changing their name to ‘salmon’ in order to get free sushi.
Around 150 people have applied to have their name legally changed in the last two days due to a promotion at popular sushi chain Sushiro.
As part of the deal, anyone who presents an ID containing the Chinese characters ‘Gui Yu’ – meaning ‘salmon’ – gets all-you-can-eat sushi for free.
A university student with the surname ‘Ma’ told local news that he changed his name Thursday morning an had already eaten sushi worth £170.
Taiwanese students have been legally changing their names so they feature the Chinese characters for ‘salmon’ (circled) to take advantage of a sushi promotion
He also announced that his new first name is ‘Bao Cheng Gui Yu’, which roughly translated means ‘Explosive Good Looking Salmon’.
But Taiwanese officials failed to see the funny side of the promotion, and accused people of wasting time with the spurious requests.
‘This kind of name-change not only wastes time but causes unnecessary paperwork,’ deputy interior minister Chen Tsung-yen said.
He urged people to ‘cherish their administrative resources’ and ‘be more rational about it’ in future.
Local media dubbed the phenomenon ‘salmon chaos’ and ran interviews with people who took advantage of the promotion.
Roughly translated, Ma’s new moniker means: ‘Explosive Good Looking Salmon’.
‘I’ve changed my first name to salmon and two of my friends also did,’ a woman surnamed Tung told SET TV. ‘We’ll just change our names back afterwards.’
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’.
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