McDonald’s Japan Brings Back Ronald

McDonald’s Japan shocked fans with a surprise announcement that they’re changing the name of the chain’s mascot. Some might say it’s crazy to throw away decades of name recognition for such a widely recognized spokescharacter, but McDonald’s Japan feels like the time is right, and posted on its official X account that that the famous clown decked out in the company’s red and yellow colors will, from now on, be known as Ronald McDonald.

However, ever since Japan’s first McDonald’s opened in 1971, he’s been known here as “Donald McDonald.” It’s not exactly clear why Ronald got a new leading consonant for his name while crossing the Pacific.

One theory is that Den Fujita, the Japanese businessman who established McDonald’s Japan, thought that “Ronald” would be difficult for Japanese people to pronounce.

However, the Japanese language has both “ro” and “do” sounds, and “ro” isn’t at all a rare sound within Japanese names or vocabulary, so it’s not a particularly difficult sound for native Japanese speakers to make.

Another possible explanation that’s been posited online is that the change to Donald was made to avoid confusion with Ranald MacDonald, who in 1848 became the first native English speaker to teach the language in Japan.