What NOT to Call Your Furniture Store

• yetsune
  February 13th, 2008 at 7:53 am

  At least the locals won’t understand what the real meaning behind morning wood is. You should check out the WTF Group:

  http://www.wtfgroup.com/

• Justin
  February 13th, 2008 at 10:43 am

  OH YES! ZINGER!

• JohnyD
  February 13th, 2008 at 10:54 am

  Or maybe it’s just the litteral translation of the korean name they chose.

• lambkill
  February 13th, 2008 at 11:19 am

  I live in Koreatown in Los Angeles and you would not believe the amount of “lost in translation” moments I’ve seen on businesses.

• Grok
  February 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am

  @3

  Actually, the name of the company in Korean (the four symbols to the lower right) is pronounced “mo ning woo de.” Ahh, thank you Engrish, you’ve made my day! The nice thing about Korean is that the written language is phoenetic, so a lot of Engrish makes it’s way in.

  The OP should send this to http://www.Engrish.com, post-haste! Tons of examples of these, which I think are hilarious. Most of them are a result of either mistranslations/mispronunciations (e.g. r’s and l’s are often exchanged since the equivalent sound in many Asian languages is a hybrid of both), or someone with less than perfect understanding of English put together words which either sound cool/evocative or are from a really bad translation.

• bean
  February 13th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

  The arrow on the left pointing up is a nice touch.

• todayinart.com
  February 13th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

  Whhaahhahahahaa!

• Abdul Alhazred
  February 13th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

  I see nothing inappropriate. It’s a good name.

  “Furniture as comforting as morning wood”

• Grok
  February 13th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

  Oh, I forgot to mention that Uijongbu has (or at least had until 2000 when I was there) a significant American population since the headquarters of the 2nd Infantry Division is/was located there. Therefore it’s safe to assume SOMEBODY in town knew what “morning wood” meant. Either someone decided to mess with the store owner in the event that he/she asked an English-speaking friend what to name the store, or he/she knew exactly what they was doing. Pretty crafty either way, and the store probably gets a fair amount of attention.

• Nate Deviate
  February 13th, 2008 at 2:58 pm

  I wonder if their furniture is all hard wood, or if they go with a softer wood like pine….

• VonSkippy
  February 13th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

  It’s just down the road from “Pitch a Tent” Sporting Goods Store.

• Ali S.
  February 13th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

  Oh dear. Engrish strikes again!

• xxmoi
  February 13th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

  The english isn’t a translation of a korean name, the hangul letters romanize to ‘mo-ning u-deu’, which is how they would pronounce the english words ‘morning wood.’

  Other than the, uh… euphemism in the store’s name, the design is really cute and attractive. XD

• Carl Huber
  February 13th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

  There’s a street called “morning wood” right next to me.

• misha
  February 14th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

  That’s a lot like the Make Yourself… Fucking Lovely store I saw somewhere around that area.

  http://flickr.com/photos/mishamc/2174716455/in/set-72157603575774721/

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