Say goodbye to kiwi fruits and hello to zespris

Zespri and mango on a mound of ice cream. A zespri and strawberry salad. Or a cocktail garnished with slices of lemon and zespri.

There’s a no-no word at Interbrand – it’s Kiwi. The branding consultancy hopes that soon the word will lose any connection it ever had with fruit from New Zealand and be used only in jokes about people from the country and their relationship with sheep, or in reference to New Zealand’s legendary flightless bird.

Interbrand has been asked to rename New Zealand’s small green furry export. “The problem was that the name was becoming generic, the technical name is

Chinese gooseberry, but anyone growing them outside New Zealand has been calling them kiwi fruit,” says Interbrand’s Andy Milligan.

Zespri derives from the word zest, meaning both fruit pulp and energy, and espri, the French word for spirit sans the final T.

The name has apparently gone down a treat in Japan and Asia, but will the British public be educated so easily?

Diary conducted a survey and discovered that 15 out of 20 people called their vacuum cleaners “Hoovers” when none were Hoover models. And as for all those people that haven’t gone metric yet, it remains to be seen how long it will take for the new name to sink in.

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