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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Scouting about in an old notebook on the off-chance of stumbling across some vague half-recollection I was nearly close to almost grasping, I came across this newspaper item which I had once intended sharing, pending the settlement of dust…
Sainsbury’s has renamed Pollack as Colin because, it said, potential buyers were too embarrassed to ask for pollack, a cheap and plentiful cod substitute. After a marketing revamp by the designer Wayne Hemingway, and extensive market research, Sainsbury’s hopes colin will revitalise the market for the fish.
Colin is to be pronounced “colan”, after the French term for cooked pollack. France buys 70 per cent of stocks from British waters. Packs of fish, in new packaging, will go on sale in 10 stores to determine whether the rebranding will appeal. “It seems daft that pollack isn’t more popular, particularly when it’s readily available off our own coast, tastes great and is cheaper than cod,” said Hemingway, founder of the Red or Dead fashion brand.
...but there was no dust, and the matter seemed to evaporate overnight. “Embarrassed to ask for pollack” means it sounds too much like bollock, but that Frenchified pronunciation of colin sounds more like colon, which isn’t much of an improvement on bollock, if any. Little wonder the revamp foundered. But I find myself wondering about the US pronunciation of ‘Colin’ as I recall General Colin Powell stretching that initial vowel of his forename, perplexing many of we Brits who were paying attention. Every other Colin I’ve come across has rhymed with, say, pollen rather pole-in.
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I suddenly recall Anthony Powell, “the English Proust”, and writer of ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’. I’ve had the odd reluctant stab at it but no more. Powell famously insisted on his surname being pronounced as Pole, rhyming with bowl rather than bowel.
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My experience with Colin is, perhaps unsurprisingly, backwards: I had only heard “Cole-in†and was surprised the first time I heard someone pronounce his own name (or a family member pronounce it, I don’t remember) as “Call-inâ€. I wondered (again, as I remember, but it was many years ago and I don’t much trust my memory on the issue) if the “Call-in†pronunciation was euphemistically motivated.
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The name Colin is not very common in the US (at least it was not in my experience). I suppose unfamiliarity with the name or familiarity with it only through reading, coupled with the orthographical contrast between it and the last name Collins may have influenced the US pronunciation.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2020-08-26 23:49:53)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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