I have been to Portugal recently and discovered this fridge branded „Kunft“. Was this a „Vorsprung durch Technik“ or „Haägen Dasz“ strategy of naming or was it just by incident? My first theory: The fridge had to feel serious, reliable, well engineered.

That makes for a german brand name to evocate or connote german reliability and „Vorsprung durch Technik“-feeling. Second thought: As with Haägen Dasz and a lot brand names sounding extremely alien (danish, italian, french, american etc.) to one’s foreigner’s ears, possibly the brand managers of this portuguese importer or manufacturer of electric devices wanted to give the brand a push forward by naming it somehow teutonic. Interestingly, there is no german word „kunft“, only the resemblance to Kunst/art. Every time I looked at the fridge I thought: Why not name art/Kunst „Kunft“? Have you been to the Kunftausstellung? Yes, I studied Freie Kunft. It’s no big deal to make Kunft etc… Although there are a lot of composite words like Ankunft, Niederkunft, Zukunft, „-kunft“ in German stays an appendix. But maybe one of my readers knows the mystery behind the advent of „kunft“, which seems to be a close translation.