Free katsu for people named Kat and Sue

katsukare

Is your name Kat, Sue, or anything similar (e.g., Katie, Suzy, Katrina, Susan, Katherine, Suzanne)? Do you live in the UK?

If so, you can get a free Katsu-based dish (the Katsu Curry, the Katsu Burger, or the Katsu Carbonara) at participating Banana Tree restaurants from September 22 to 25.

To participate in the promotion, visit your local Banana Tree after 4pm on one of the above dates, purchase a drink of your choice, and present both your ID and your “Big Flavour Club” membership code.

The giveaway celebrates National Katsu Day (Sep. 27) — which was invented by a different UK restaurant several years ago. :)

P.S. The Japanese word katsu — which refers to a piece of meat that has been coated in panko, deep-fried, and cut into strips — is a shortened form of katsuretsu, a transliteration of the English word cutlet.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Koshien katsukare 2016 (25623057670) by Kanesue under CC BY 2.0.

Named Betty? Join the club.

chairs

In 1994, Betty Krueger of Red Cloud, Nebraska, took out a personal ad in the Hastings Tribune. It began:

BETTY — To anyone named Betty or who goes by the name of Betty, would you like to meet other Bettys? How many of us are there?

Twelve Bettys (including Krueger) attended the first meeting of the Betty Club, which continues to meet several times per year to this day.

The original Betty Club inspired Bettys across the state to create more than a dozen other Betty Clubs in the mid-1990s. Not long after that, Nebraska’s annual Betty Convention was established.

The second convention, held in 1998, was attended by 64 Bettys and covered by the New York Times, which noted that “Betty clubs exist in other states, but Nebraska is said to be especially rich in Bettys.”

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Chaises-saint-denis (public domain) by Thierry Caro

Timeline progress #2

Hi everyone! Here’s another quick update regarding the baby name timeline, which I’ve been revamping since late 2023.

As of right now, more than 70% of the years on the timeline have been transferred to individual pages featuring several sets of rankings:

  • The top 5 names overall (male & female),
  • The top 5 absolute increases in usage (male & female),
  • The top 5 relative increases in usage (male & female), and
  • The top 5 debuts (male & female).

In the last progress post, I mentioned that three decades had been fully converted. Since then, I’ve finished another five: the 1900s, the 1910s, the 1920s, the 1960s, and the 1990s.

Hopefully it’ll all be done sometime next year!