# name for a cafe



## ngeng4 (Jun 9, 2011)

hi all,

im newbie here..

found this forum after google nice name for cafe..

well,

im looking for a name to start my new cafe..

prefer to have it in french name since im soooo in love with french itself..

everything bout french, food, language.

any idea?

its just a small cafe selling macarons, cookies, pie, puff, etc.


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## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

i'm assuming you want something more fanciful than a french name - cafe' du parc, or chez ngeng (whatever your first name is)

I think you might try

le cake

or le plumcake (french people, i'm never sure what is le and what is la so correct me if i'm wrong)

kind of a twist on a french use of an english word.  You;d have to serve poundcake though.

i don;t know enough french to be useful, but translating something you particularly like might be nice.(i don;t know, like "the dancing strawberry" just to be silly and off the top of my head - something like that, or else the name of one of the cakes ytou intend to serve - le bigne (don;t quote me, i never remember the genders of nouns).   Just don;t use an online translator, make sure you have an actual french person (not american with french origin) to translate it.  (I know how badly italian americans write italian! after many years in a country your original language gets distorted and you don;t realize it - which would account for many of the italianisms that have crept into my english). 

However if you;re not doing french pastry in there, then don;t give it a french name.  If it's mostly pie, cookies, american style cakes, you don;t want a misleading french name.  It would undermine the overall effect to expect a french pastry place and to find muffins and chocolate chip cookies!


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## chrisbelgium (Oct 2, 2010)

Le café du pâtissier


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## thetincook (Jun 14, 2002)

Well, if we are going to name it after the food, we could always look to a modern classic, Cafe des Boules au Chocolat Salé


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## ngeng4 (Jun 9, 2011)

hi all, thank u so much for all the suggestion..

still cant find suitable name..

ok let me make it more clear..

my idea is to sell macarons, simple cake [red velvet, choc, cheesecake,carrot cake], croissant, some simple pasta.

Its main idea was to attract people to come having a dessert or coffee or simple meal at the cafe. People is really crazy bout macarons in my place now especially teenagers. so the main attraction is macarons.


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## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

Le Macaron? 

L'amande

l'amande sucree' (not sure douce would be understood!)


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## lailasmith01 (Jun 23, 2011)

how about *The French Cafe*? /img/vbsmilies/smilies/chef.gif

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## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

I wouldn't suggest calling it the french cafe, unless you make it a joke, and give all the non-french things you serve french names, in the way that they've done in france (despite the language police and french language academy that wants to keep foreign words out of france)  where they put the french article in front of the english word (le pullover, le cake, le plumcake)

If you want to pull it off really well you'd have to find out how they do call things like muffins and pies in france (a "tarte" is not really a pie). 

For instance is it "Le muffin" or "la muffin", (muffins are pretty universal in europe now, though they often seem more like cupcakes, but it might be cute for people to see "le muffin" "le muffin de mais" (corn muffins).  But you'd have to be careful not to be misleading (tarte aux pommes is a flat tart with apples laid on top and apricot jam spread on it) My french is nowhere good enough but hyou would have to call it something like "tarte aux pommes a l'americaine" or maybe "le pie des pommes" (don't use this, the grammar is probably wrong, but you get the idea) - 

It would be tacky to have a poor french translation with the wrong gender or case or usage.  Just to give you an example of how bad it can sound, there's a butcher specializing in pork products here in rome and you see the trucks around occasionally and they call it "Pig's house" - which was clearly some italian trying to translate "la casa del maiale" which sounds perfectly fine in italian, but he didn't consult a mother tongue speaker of english.  In english you should say "the house of pork" .  There are hundreds of examples of this around and they always look bad.  Use french or any language you like but make SURE you're using it correctly!


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Siduri hit a hotbutton with me: faked French. Where I've lived (Midwest U.S., mostly within 100 miles of Chicago), it's not uncommon to see words "Frenchified" with accent marks (usually in the wrong place, or the wrong accent mark or both), or the article "Le" or La" or "Les" used inappropriately. Bad English spelling, grammar and syntax cause the same effect! For example, there's a coffee shop nearby that spells café as Caffé, thereby committing two infractions at once.

There are several early threads here about naming one's business (some are bakeries). They also mention cautions such as making sure you're not using an existing name, etc. 

Mezzaluna


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## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

Mezzaluna said:


> For example, there's a coffee shop nearby that spells café as Caffé, thereby committing two infractions at once


Actually in Italian coffee has two fs , so only one mistake (the angle of the accent).


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## panini (Jul 28, 2001)

Boulangerie American,

Panini Cafe/img/vbsmilies/smilies/biggrin.gif

Bagelette Cafe


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## chrisbelgium (Oct 2, 2010)

ngeng4 said:


> my idea is to sell macarons, simple cake [red velvet, choc, cheesecake,carrot cake], croissant, some simple pasta.
> 
> Its main idea was to attract people to come having a dessert or coffee or simple meal at the cafe. People is really crazy bout macarons in my place now especially teenagers. so the main attraction is macarons.


Ngeng, macarons are very big in Europe too, for now. It's very trendy, but for how long?

I just mean, don't link your name to just one product or productgroup; you will almost certainly evolve in the future and you don't want to be stuck to a name that is no longer appropriate.

Siduri already suggested to get a playful name in kind of a french/english fun combo. I agree completely. Also, when having a french name, just write it without mistakes. Can you ever imagine how it looks when choosing an english name spelled wrongly?

A few more suggestions... "French Friandises" or "Le Bite Gourmand" or "The petit creux" or "The mange-tout"


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