Our family moved to Australia when I was 7, and I was happy that I could take to school drink bottles with juice in it. My mother got hold of that concentrated drink from a Japanese import food shop, and let me take that drink to school.
I was new to the school, and my classmates were very curious of everything I had. They looked at my pencils, rubber, pencil case, lunch box, and my drink bottle. The Japanese girl had different lunch, so they wanted to taste a little. They were also curious about what was in the drink bottle.
I could not speak English well, but I could tell that my classmates wanted to taste my lunch and drink, so I let them have some. My friends liked the drink, so they asked me what the name of the juice was. I proudly said,
"Calpis!" (It was the name of the product)
"Oooh, yuck! Cow pis!"
"???"
My friends who just had enjoyed the drink was now making a great fuss about it. I could not figure out what had gone wrong.
Later I found out that 'Calpis' sounded very similar to 'cow pis', and my friends thought that they had drank "it".
Words put ideas in your head. After this incident, my friends did not ask me for a sip of my drink although it was not 'cow pis' at all. Words are powerful.
This was years before export version of Calpis was made. Now, the export version had arranged the name of the product to "Calpico". Sales-wise, I think the re-naming was a wise choice.
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