Dog lovers often give Anglophone names to their pets. I am thinking of \u201cJohn,\u201d \u201cLeo,\u201d and \u201cElisabeth.\u201d When outside, they are often called by such names, as in \u201cJohn, stop!\u201d or \u201cBeth, don\u2019t you go over there!\u201d<\/p>\r\n
What do people from Britain and America make of this, I wonder? How is a John likely to feel? \u201cJohn! No, no! Come here!\u201d Thinking of the Johns I know who know Japanese, I can\u2019t help but feel sorry for them.<\/p>\r\n
When I was young, nobody gave their pets such names. \u201cPochi,\u201d \u201cBuchi,\u201d \u201cTar\u014d,\u201d and other Japanese-style names were in vogue. At some point, they became \u201cJohn\u201d and \u201cBeth.\u201d This might work as a theme in Japanese popular culture, mightn\u2019t it? Although this naming does not extend to cats. And I suppose \u201cPochi\u201d might be a foreign import, too.<\/p>\r\n
A friend of mine uses a disc-shaped automatic vacuum cleaner, a Roomba. She calls the machine \u201cCatherine.\u201d Apparently, when the Roomba starts moving on its own, she calls out, \u201cCatherine, come here!\u201d I can only hope that she has no visitors called Catherine.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":2244,"template":"","message_category":[23],"class_list":["post-2233","messages","type-messages","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","message_category-serialization-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/messages\/2233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/messages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/messages"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"message_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/message_category?post=2233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}