Over 150 Taiwanese Changed Their Name to ‘Salmon’ for Free Sushi; Officials Urging Them to Stop

The name you’re born with isn’t always the one that sticks with you throughout your life.

People change their names for a variety of reasons. This includes hating the sound of it, correcting a spelling error, or wanting to remove it because of its association with a bad memory.

Or, you know, sometimes you could change your name because you really, really want some sushi.

Over 150 Taiwanese Changed Their Name to ‘Salmon’ for Free Sushi; Officials Urging Them to Stop

Much like many front-page news articles, it all started with a restaurant promotion.

A chain of sushi restaurants in Taiwan held a two-day promotion on Wednesday and Thursday (18 March).

Under this promotion, any customer whose ID card contained “gui yu” – the Chinese characters for salmon – would be entitled to an all-you-can-eat sushi meal. And they could bring their five friends along for the free meal too.

Sounds like a great deal, right? The only problem is this: who the heck names their kid salmon?

So, some Taiwanese residents came up with a crazy yet simple solution to this problem;  they legally changed their name to Salmon just to get free sushi.

In fact, over 150 people, mostly young, visited government offices in the last few days to officially change their name.

Taiwan actually allows people to officially change their name up to three times. But needless to say, this was not what they had in mind.

Now that “salmon chaos” – as labelled by the media – has taken over, Taiwanese officials are not amused, and one begged people to stop.

“This kind of name change not only wastes time but causes unnecessary paperwork,” deputy interior minister, Chen Tsung-yen, told reporters on Thursday.

He urged the public to “cherish administrative resources”, but all they seem to cherish at the moment is sushi.

“I hope everyone can be more rational about it,” he added.

So, what exactly did these people change their name to?

“Explosive Good Looking Salmon”

In an interview with a local media organisation, one man explained how he took advantage of the sushi 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 (£176)”, he said.

Roughly translated, his new name means “Explosive Good Looking Salmon.”

He claimed that two of his friends changed their names for the promotion as well. “We’ll just change our names back afterwards”, he said.

Other choices include “Salmon Prince”, “Meteor Salmon King” and “Salmon Fried Rice”.

Meanwhile, I’m going to change my name to Boba in case a similar bubble tea promotion pops up.

Featured Image: hlphoto / Shutterstock.com