Albertaâs Hellâs Basement Brewery has apologised after accidentally naming their New Zealand pale ale âHuruhuruâ after the Maori term for pubic hair.
The Medicine Hat brewery, which released the ale two years ago, said they looked up the term in a dictionary and believed it meant âfeather.â
Maori TV personality Te Hamua Nikora pointed out on Facebook that âhuruhuruâ is more commonly used to refer to pubic hair in te reo, the language Maori people speak.
âYes I know huruhuru means feather, fur and even hair of the head,â he wrote on Facebook. âI know this. But it is most commonly used as hair from a personâs privates.â
âWhen the Maori look at the name of your store, theyâre not going to see âfeatherâ or soft leather, theyâre going to see âpubes,ââ he added in a video posted to his page.
He called on both Hellâs Basement and a leather shop in New Zealand to stop using the word and feeling âentitledâ to using the Maori peopleâs language without any respect.
âIf you are selling leather, call it leather, donât call it pubic hair unless you are selling pubic hair and donât call beer pubic hair unless you make it with pubic hair,â he said according to The Guardian.
Other chimed in with similar sentiments on social media, and encouraged companies to stop using languages that arenât their own as a marketing tactic.
An online Maori dictionary defines huruhuru in a few ways, including âhair, feather, coarse hair, bristles (not normally of the head), furâ and the phrase âpuke huruhuruâ specifically as a womanâs pubic hair.
Others recalled when condiment giant Heinz named their new ketchup-mayonnaise sauce âMayochupâ which had a rather unfortunate translation into the word âshitfaceâ in Cree.
Hellâs Basement told CBC News that it would be rebranding the drink.
âWe acknowledge that we did not consider the commonplace use of the term huruhuru as a reference to pubic hair, and that consultation with a Maori representative would have been a better reference than online dictionaries,â Mike Patriquin, the breweryâs founder, said.
âWe wish to make especially clear that it was not our intent to infringe upon, appropriate, or offend the Maori culture or people in any way; to those who feel disrespected, we apologise.â