Salmon chaos has Taiwan's big eaters hooked on name-change

A Taiwanese official has issued a plea for people to stop changing their name to "salmon" after dozens made the unusual move to take advantage of a restaurant promotion.

In a scheme dubbed "Salmon Chaos" by media, about 150 mostly young people flocked to government offices recently to officially register a change of name.

The cause was a chain of sushi restaurants. Under a promotion which ended yesterday any customer whose ID card contained "Gui Yu" - the Chinese characters for salmon - would be entitled to an all-you-can-eat sushi meal along with five friends.

Taiwan allows people to officially change their name up to three times.

But officials were not amused.

"This kind of name-change not only wastes time but causes unnecessary paperwork," deputy interior minister Chen Tsung-yen said.

Among those who took advantage of the promotion was a college student named Ma, who said: "I just changed my name this morning to add the characters 'Bao Cheng Gui Yu' and we already ate more than NT$7,000 (HK$1,916)."

Ma's new moniker means: "Explosive Good Looking Salmon."

"I've changed my first name to salmon and two of my friends also did," one woman said. "We'll just change our names back afterward."