Russian-made vodka, a drink that was popularized in the West by James Bond and is among Russia’s most identifiable exports, is now the target of an international backlash. New Hampshire announced it was removing “Russian-made and Russian-branded spirits” from state-run stores. Quebec’s state-run liquor stores are slashing 10 Russian-made spirits from their offerings.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to Know
Russia has also found itself increasingly ostracized from global sporting and cultural events. The International Olympic Committee recommended that athletes from Russia be barred from sporting events, and the Eurovision Song Contest, the wildly popular singing competition, has also barred Russia from participating.
In the Francophone world, calling Mr. Putin “Poutine” in French may be a matter of diplomacy, though there are disagreements in some linguistic quarters over the origin of the pronunciation.
In French, the English word “Putin” is pronounced the same way as “putain,” a very popular swear word. One theory behind why Mr. Putin is called Poutine in French is that spelling his name as “Putin” would mislead French speakers to pronounce it like their famous insult, while presenting a diplomatic challenge at summit meetings, among other places.
But several linguistic scholars discounted the insult theory. Tatiana Bottineau, a professor of Russian linguistics at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, said that Poutine was written and pronounced like the fatty Quebecois dish, “poutine,” because the transliteration of the Russian president’s name from Cyrillic into French was different from its transliteration into English.
Sergueï Sakhno, a professor of Russian linguistics at Sorbonne University in Paris, observed that such differences in transliteration also explained why, for example, the Russian author Alexander Pushkin was written in French as “Alexandre Pouchkine.”
Mr. Proulx said he had been deeply moved after his gesture was acknowledged across the Atlantic in Ukraine. Natalia Moussienko, a research fellow at the Modern Art Research Institute in Kyiv, told Radio Canada, the French-language Canadian broadcaster, that she applauded the restaurant. She commended it for its decision to “DePoutineize poutine.”
Adele Cordonnier contributed reporting from Paris.
