Have you heard of "Metal Umlauts", perhaps? When a heavy-metal band wants a name that sounds exotic, gothic and vaguely menacing they will sometimes add an umlaut ("¨" - the two dots in "ä", "ö", "ü" and so on) to a vowel or two. Think "Motörhead", for instance. This can backfire; British metal band "Trojan" famously added an umlaut to their name to become "Tröjan". This means "the shirt" in Swedish, and doesn't really evoke the air of menace the band was aiming for - though I guess it did make for some deliciously self-referential concert t-shirts.
Nerd Coffee, Umeda.
There's a recent café in the Umeda underground that's afflicted with a similar case of Umlautitis. It has a Scandinavian theme - the furniture and decorations are Nordic minimalist, and there was even a long text explaining the Swedish tradition of "fika" - an extended coffee break - in passable but "interesting" Swedish and in Japanese. It looks like a very pleasant coffee shop, and I've been meaning to stop by. The name is "Nördkaffe".
Perhaps the owner has lived in Sweden and got inspired to do a Swedish-style café back in Osaka. I think the real name is "Nordkaffe" ("Nordic coffee"), and indeed, the Japanese transcription uses the "nordkafe" (ノードカフェ) pronunciation. The umlaut (and the second "f") is only there to give the name an exotic touch. But as with "Tröjan", this changes the meaning: "Nördkaffe" means "Nerd Coffee" or オタクカフェ. Unlikely to be quite what the owner intended, of course, but the name is memorable and the place looks very nice. We really should stop by next time.
