Goethian Name as Korean Commodities

Abstract

The Lotte Group is a diverse conglomerate empire in the South Korean business market, with businesses and investments in multiple sectors located in South Korea, other Asian countries, and the US. It is becoming a global market leader in the world economy; in fact, Forbes magazine ranked the Lotte Group’s retail division as the world’s number three department store in 2013. The focus is the proper name of this group, Lotte. The founding group’s president, Kyuck-Ho Shin, has stated that he wished to channel his admiration for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by branding his merchandise, supermarket chain, and hotels with the name Lotte, the diminutive form of Charlotte, in a direct reference to The Sorrows of Young Werther. Consumers encounter the Lotte logo daily, and this feminized encounter pacifies any possible suspicion that a giant corporation may indeed be engulfing the Korean citizens’ physical and linguistic landscape. Drawing on communication studies and linguistic landscape studies, the focus is on the role of the proper name “Lotte” in South Korean advertising to uncover the multivalent, mythic power of German classical female archetypes in contemporary Korean circulation.