Bad Gaelic Tattoo translations

[O'Callaghan]

My family once came from the Irish town of Cobh in the county of Cork, which of course is Corcaigh in Gaelige. That is odd enough in itself, using the Irish name Cobh for the town, as the use of Irish was already extinct in that area when the town was founded in 1725, but never mind. I certainly understand why they wouldn't want to call it Queenstown, albeit the Cove of Cork, in English, was the original name.

I could cite many examples of bad translations, but I will stick to something I saw myself. It was a Suzuki motorcycle in London. Someone had painted the name Suzuki on the tank, but done it in Runes, not in Japanese script. That, by itself, would be fine, but they had used late period Norse Runes, which only have 16 letters. English was originally written in Anglo-Friesian runes, which had 32 letters, and both derive from Germanic Runes (I think those actually used 26 letters?). People used to think the Norse version was the original, because those inscriptions were found first by modern archeologists, but in fact that is not the case. Perhaps I am being pedantic, but what does a Japanese motorcycle in England have to do with Norse? Perhaps the owner's name was Sven?