Recipe Names as a Gateway to Interpersonal Communication

Abstract

An examination of Japanese cookbooks from the early twentieth century to date demonstrates that changes in the nature of recipe names over the past 87 years have made the relationship between the writer and the audience closer. Recipe names have come to be more informative and creative through the rich use of mimetics, metaphors, and word play. Furthermore, they have become more personalized and stylized. The personal stories behind these recipe names help the author elicit in readers a sense of camaraderie and/or nostalgic memories that specific food items in a given historical period evoke. This article demonstrates two things: what seem to be simple names for recipes can be regarded as a gateway to interpersonal communication between the author and audience; and recipe names have evolved into an increasingly enriched form of communication over time by ingenious use of various tools available in the language.

Keywords:

• Recipe names
• informativeness
• brevity
• interpersonal communication
• identity
• personalization

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions that significantly improved the content of this article. Thanks also go to Stuart Davis for discussing various aspects of the larger project. Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Name Society held in Austin, TX, on 5–8 January 2017, and the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society held at Occidental College in Los Angeles on 14–16 June 2017. I thank the attendees of these conferences for their input.