Saturday, December 09, 2006

Star and Gulder

Just as the French like to claim Simenon, Brel, Magritte, Reinhardt, Herge et al as their own (even though they are all Belgian), so too Nigerians take Star and Gulder to be icons of Nigerianness. Not so. As I learnt last weekend, both are in fact Ghanaian in origin. In Ghana, they sell both in smaller half-litre bottles, which is much more civilised.

I wonder how long the list would be of famous people who are mistakenly thought of as Nigerian would be. As a starter, one could start with David Ajayi, the much-admired (and Ghanaian) architect.

10 comments:

Anonymous,  12:34 pm  

I've heard Ghana has (or had) draught Star too.

For some reason I always smile when I see a bottle of star. Only Because it's RATS backwards... I'm weird.

I've started drinking Gulder Max now. It took me a few tries to grow to like it but now Star and Regular Gulder taste like water to me!

naijablogger 4:08 pm  

star and gulder are more nigerian than any other thing called nigerian,don't get it twisted.safe

Anonymous,  4:19 pm  

That's the mistake - it's David "Adjaye". It easy to see how the pronunciation might fool people into thinking he's Nigerian. The spelling though, says something different.

Anonymous,  4:24 pm  

The name is actually David "Adjaye", which is why people might be misled.

Anonymous,  5:55 am  

It better be Adjaye, because if it's Ajayi, sorry my friend, there is definitely some Nigeria in there somewhere.

Ajayi is proper Yoruba

Jeremy 7:57 am  

my mistake - it IS Adjaye. He's done some remarkable stuff in London..

Anonymous,  8:19 pm  

you know indomie is nigerian too right lol

u should see naijas and indonesians squabbling over whose indomie it really is, the indonesians are always confounded by these usurpers from africa claiming indomie is nigerian ehehe when the name clearly states indo noodles

no mind us jare

Anonymous,  10:17 am  

This is stale, but ...

Didier Drogba - Diran Aderogba

Celine Dion - Selina Odion

Shaquille O'Neal: Shakiru Oni

Michael Jordan: Mukaila Joda

It's difficult to tell wrt these names ;))))). There's an article here by Tonye David-West about how Nigerians unNigerianise their names:
http://nigeriaworld.com/feature/publication/david-west/naija_rooney/070601.html

Excerpts:

1. Babatunde---------Barry. This means the Jazz legend, Barry White, is actually Babatunde White.

2. Adebayo----------Baylor. Come on, now. Is Bayo so difficult that we have to adopt "Baylor" as its abbreviation?

3. Chukwuemeka---------Micky. Could you imagine, Lt. Col. Micky Odumegwu Ojukwu? Or Disney cartoon character called Chuwkuemeka Mouse?

4. Tamunoami-------Amy. Why abbrievate such a beautiful name?

5. Adenike-------Nikki.

6. Nwankwu-------Wanny. Could you imagine, the football commentator shouting at the top of his lungs, "O' Wanny Kanu has just scored for Nigeria." "Wanny who?", fans would ask.

7. Kayode-------karl. So Karl Marx was actually Kayode Marx.

8. Taiwo-------Tyrone. God help us on this one.

9. Oladele------Dale. Oladele sounds sweeter, doesn't it?

10. Oladapo-----Daps. He must have gone off the deep end when he adopted this abbreviation. What happened to "Dapo"?

supermandru 3:39 pm  

Ayatollah Khomeini is actually Ayantola Komenikan, his dad was a Yoruba man from Abeokuta ;-p

kevin 10:33 am  

Don't know about Star but Gulder is Dutch and brewed under license in both countries. I've never seen it on sale in the Netherlands though...

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