[The] Home Depot

Wily brother Mike spotted the following. Here’s the Canadian logo:

Home Depot Canadian Logo

And here’s the U.S. logo:

The US Home Depot logo

For some reason, they drop “The” in Canada.

Comments

Marcus's picture
Marcus on May 2, 2004 - 15:21 Permalink

Maybe it’s Quebec?


I remember reading where Eatons renamed all their stores “Eaton” after the Charte de la langue fran

steve's picture
steve on May 2, 2004 - 18:48 Permalink

Yeah Pete I suspect this is a language issue. Probably “Home Depot” doesn’t have to be translated because to “Depot de la maison” or soemthing like that because it’s their official name, but they may run into troubles with the “The” and so it’s easier to leave it out. I’ll look into it further.

Ken's picture
Ken on May 2, 2004 - 18:52 Permalink

Some french words used in Paris and shunned personally when used by me to a french teachers daughter as wrong are le weekend, le parking, le coach. Here they are taught fin de semain, l’estacionnemente, l’entraineur.

Now I can’t really speak french well, but it must be funny to listen to me speak french I think.

Back to the question at hand, Eaton is very neutral versus the proper translation from Eatons (store) would be chez Eaton give or take a few prepositions. First I thought it was just plural Eatons, which would be les Eatons. Either way it is recognizably french and not english. So my point is by paring it down to just the word it plays well in both official languages, just like Home Depot. If you accept the use of Home in french which a Parisian would before an Acadian.

Alan's picture
Alan on May 5, 2004 - 02:55 Permalink

Behind the visitor’s bench at Maple Leafs Gardens, a row of the US version of the logo was on display.

DerekMac's picture
DerekMac on November 2, 2004 - 13:46 Permalink

The Home Depot”, complete with the definite article, has opened in Charlottetown. I think the version sans article is more prevalent in Quebec, where the “The” would be seen as English. Or maybe they just ran out of Canadian signs…

You can find both versions on homedepot.ca, but only the “The” version on homedepot.com.