Rochambeau game

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 11, 2004, at 11:22 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

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> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Rochambeau game
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> While I was looking around for "Shambo" I ran across the term
> "Rochambeau"
> (also "Rochambeaux", "Roshambo", etc.) used as the name of the
> "rock-paper-scissors" game (sometimes called "jan ken pon" or "guu
> choki
> pan" [Japanese], I think).
>
> Rochambeau was of course a French general prominent in the US
> Revolutionary
> War.
>
> By Web search, I do not find any evidence of such a name for this game
> until very recently (1994 in Usenet).
>
> Anybody recognize it? Is it a recent invention? I believe it was used
> on TV
> ("South Park") in recent years. Straight Dope had a piece on it but no
> documentation for this name.
>
> Why would the game have this name? Do the rock and paper and scissors
> have
> names like "ro", "shan", "bo" in some language? Did Gen. Rochambeau
> play
> the game?
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>

You can google the game under "roshambo." I think that this is a
Japanese version of the name of the game and that "jankenpon," which is
the name that I know the game by, is another Japanese version of the
name. You can also google it under the latter name, as well as under
"rock paper scissors." I googled it a couple of years ago and this is
what I can more or less remember of what I found.

-Wilson Gray