Rambo - American Hero / Malaysian Fruit

We all remember that lovable killing machine played by Sylvester Stallone which graced our silver screens in the 1980's, don't we? I refer of course to Rambo. This character almost but not quite won the war in Afghanistan and Vietnam singlehandedly. Too bad that America had only one Rambo cause surely if there were at least two of them, then the U.S. Army would be truly unstoppable. Canadians have reason to fear Rambo too. In the first movie, "First Blood", Rambo shoots up the entire town of Hope, British Columbia (the town was standing in for an American town in Washington State). It had something to do with the fact that Canadian towns were cheaper to destroy.

Of course, all this patriotic flag-waving, muscle flexing and bad guy bashing had a great influence on young adolescent males all over the world. Many even adopted the name Rambo to identify with their hero. Most of these were strangely 100 pound weaklings. In Malaysia though some combinations of Western names and Eastern names make poor or unfortunate matches.

Imagine a young underweight weakling trying to impress pretty girl. He says, "My name is Rambo....". So far so good. Then he continues, "Rambo Tan". And the girl is rolling on the floor in hysterics.

Tan is a common family name but Rambo Tan sounds unfortunately like "Rambutan". Rambutan does not conjure up the image of a "you don't want to mess with me" macho hero in Malaysia. Rather it is the name of a popular hairy fruit.

Yup, hairy fruit! I kid you not. Look at photos for proof. The rambutan fruit is the size of a chicken egg and has a hairy, fleshy skin which may be red or yellow in color. Peel off the skin to reveal a white fleshy fruit with a woody seed in the centre. The white flesh is best described as being translucent and similar to a firmer and sweeter lychee flesh. It is a very sweet and refreshing fruit. Unfortunately, it does not ship well and very often if it makes it to overseas supermarkets, the fruit looks black and dishevelled. The fruit grows in large bunches on a large tree about 30 feet tall.

There is one further unfortunate association with the name "rambutan". There used to be one main mental asylum in Malaysia and it was in a place called Tanjung Rambutan. The name was therefore synonymous with going nuts.

So Rambo just doesn't cut it as a macho name in Malaysia. Rambo Tan is even worse. You'd either be a fruit or a nutcase!

All photos by LGS