What's in a name?

A new favourite late-night stopping-off point for many of us living in the Gulou neighbourhood is the charming - well-hidden - little courtyard bar, Amilal.

Except that it is, apparently, not really Amilal at all, but Amilana. We learn this from the business cards which have recently appeared on the bar, advertising the bar's website (still a work-in-progress: most of it doesn't seem to be functional as yet, but it should be worth a look one day - the Mongolian owner, Alus, is a passionate photographer, and the site should be displaying some examples of his work, taken on his frequent expeditions around west China). At first, I thought the good laoban might perhaps be wanting to make a distinction between his bar and his website; I wondered if perhaps 'Amilana' meant something like 'the things of Amilal' (that's what a classical education does for you!). Then I heard a theory touted by other regulars that they were related words in Mongolian, and that the difference was fairly insignificant - both meaning something like 'new life'.

But no - Alus and his staff have lately started encouraging us to try to accept that the bar has really been called Amilana all along, and that the sign outside saying "Amilal" is a mistake arising from the signwriter's ignorance of Mongolian (although I would have thought Alus would have written down the desired name for him in the Roman alphabet...). The sign, we are promised, is going to be replaced. Some time.

However, I fear poor Alus may have a bit of a battle on his hands to persuade his customers to embrace this modest rebranding. He's been open 5 or 6 months now, and we've all come to know the place - fondly - as Amilal. That name is hardwired into the drinking centres of our brains now; it's going to be very hard to change that programming.

Perhaps I should try to follow the 'third way' adopted by my new drinking partner, The Mouthpiece (he's an American journalist working for a state-run Chinese news magazine, so I have teasingly nicknamed him a "Mouthpiece of Evil" - he accepts the taunt with good grace): he finds both versions of the Mongolian name too obscure and unmemorable, and has decided to dub the place instead.... Amarillo. We know a song about that, don't we, children?