Internet foils town called Eu

Posted By Joshua Keating Monday, February 23, 2009 - 4:18 PM Share

The Times' always-worth-reading France blogger Charles Bremner tells the story of how the unfortunately named town of Eu is having a hard time transitioning into the Internet age:

Eu, which is close to the coastal town of Tréport has been suffering from a drop in holiday visitors and they think they know the reason: the internet. People booking on line are not directed to the town's fine hotels and inns because search engines fail to recognise a two-letter place name which is the same as the past participle of the verb avoir (J'ai eu, pronounced like the letter U in English, means I had). It also does not help that EU stands for European Union in English. Further complicating Eu's problem is the fact that two other French words are pronounced in identical fashion: eux, meaning them and oeufs, meaning eggs.
After making only 7,700 euros in hotel visitor tax instead of the expected 24,000, Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, the new Socialist Mayor of Eu (above), has set out to add a few more letters. She has an extra good reason for doing so. Try saying her title in French. La Maire d'Eu (The Mayor[ess] of Eu) is pronounced the same as La merde (sorry for spelling out what will be obvious to most here).

After several futile searches to find a photo of Eu to go with this post on Getty Images, I have to say I understand how this could be a problem.

EXPLORE:FRANCE, INTERNET

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DEPARTUREGATE

4:27 PM ET

February 23, 2009

not that hard

Eu, town, France. Pulls it right up on Wikipedia, pictures of the town church on flickr, etc. Am I the only one in the world who knows how to use Google? I swear my boss asks me to do stuff like this all the time.

AJW93

4:28 PM ET

February 23, 2009

oeufs...

...isn't pronounced the same way as "eu", at least not in any French I have ever heard. Maybe Quebecois?

Yeux, however, meaning "eyes", would qualify.

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