Bella Coola Restaurant

At 10:18 PM 10/11/98 GMT, Jeffrey Kopp wrote:
>Hi.  Just me, the Jargon dilettante and Web booster.  I am delighted to =
see
>the Jargon list thriving, though I find its level of erudition a bit
>intimidating.  But I do have another off-the-wall potential allusion to
>native language as seen in local signage to contribute.
>
>I was interested to see one of the trendy new restaurants which are
>sprouting up around Portland's Westmoreland district lately is named =
"Bella
>Coola."  This initially looked Italian to me, but I quickly realized =
(from
>my readings about the Jargon; I think in one of Mike's posts) that it is
>the name of a Northwest tribe and also a river. =20
>
>I didn't think that in itself was worth bringing up, but last night a
>waitress across the street also told me the name gets some smirks =
because
>it is also contemporary (Mexican) Spanish slang for "nice ass."  Or so =
she
>had heard.  So now I wonder if there is a tale here, in either the =
origin
>of the place name or this apocryphal reported slang usage.

See my other post.....but one further comment on the Spanish ability to
find humour in words and acronyms for other languages.....during the
Montreal Olympics, the organizing committee thereof was COJO (Comite des
Organisateurs des Jeux Olympiques) and the media office was ORTO
(Organisation Radio-Television Olympique)..........."cojo" and "orto" had
to be taken off the billboards in Argentina and Uruguay, where their
explicit meanings were "copulate" and "anus" (they can mean that =
elsewhere
in the Spanish-speaking world, but for some reason for the Argentines and
Uruguayans there was no getting around it......)


Mike Cleven
ironmtn at bigfoot.com
http://members.home.net/ironmtn/

The thunderbolt steers all things.
                           - Herakleitos