Admittedly, I paused for a moment when I first noticed the "Dope Rent" sign hanging above a lane in Taipei.
I figured the sign wasn't about renting illegal drugs, so I wondered what led to the use of "dope" in the company's English name. A look at the company's Chinese name "酷租" gave a clue.
The first character can mean "hip" — a loanword reflecting that "kù" (Mandarin Chinese) sounds somewhat similar to "cool" in English. A look around Dope Rent's website indicates that was the meaning they had in mind.
The rest of the English name is straightforward, as "rent" is a common translation for the second character in the Chinese name. Fittingly, both the website and the sign indicate Dope Rent is a property management company.
So they could have gone with something like "Cool Rent" for their name. But maybe they didn't think that would be so dope.
I figured the sign wasn't about renting illegal drugs, so I wondered what led to the use of "dope" in the company's English name. A look at the company's Chinese name "酷租" gave a clue.
The first character can mean "hip" — a loanword reflecting that "kù" (Mandarin Chinese) sounds somewhat similar to "cool" in English. A look around Dope Rent's website indicates that was the meaning they had in mind.
The rest of the English name is straightforward, as "rent" is a common translation for the second character in the Chinese name. Fittingly, both the website and the sign indicate Dope Rent is a property management company.
So they could have gone with something like "Cool Rent" for their name. But maybe they didn't think that would be so dope.
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