At YAPC::Asia Ingy told us all about Sporx, explaining that it was a combination of Spork and Takahashi, and so should be pronounced “Sporkahashi”. When I began to tell Karen about “Sporkahashi” she said “That was clever” when I had only mentioned the name. Because she knew little about Spork and nothing about Takahashi she had assumed the “hashi” was 箸 instead of 橋.
Well, Karen wouldn’t have thought about the kanji characters, but she knew that “hashi” (箸) meant “chopsticks”, so she thought a “spork and chopsticks” name was a smart idea from Ingy.
I don’t think anyone else spotted that. The “hashi” (橋) in Takahashi (高橋) means “bridge”; 高橋 is a surname that means “high bridge”.
She’s a lot smarter than me. I didn’t catch the connection between hashi (=chopsticks) and sporks.