My Coca-Cola® Blog

I was going through my box of newspaper and magazine clippings and found this page from the April 1999 issue of Worth magazine. The caption reads:

BILL GATES

In February, Gates and his wife, Melinda, more than doubled the assets in their two foundations thorugh a $3.3 billion gift. Our list, however, won't count the contributions until the money gets put to use. Even so, the Microsoft couple ranks 15th, having given away $196 million by the end of 1998.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTOINE LEGRAND

Well, my interest in this photo is really the contour glass bottle. Clearly it's a Coke bottle partially full (or empty) with a paper label. It's definitely not an American bottle, likely an European one. Was the bottle just a prop or did it belong to Mr. Gates (or Mr. Le Grand)?

According to Mr. Gates, he drank 3-4 Diet Cokes in the office back in 2014. (See GatesNotes - The Blog of Bill Gates from June 12, 2014) Maybe he switched from Coke to Diet in the new millennium.

Elon Musk had ~~tweeted~~ posted a photo of his bedside table on November 28, 2022 with 4 opened (or emptied) Caffeine-free Diet Coke cans.

Warren Buffet of course is a well known decades-long Cherry Coke drinker and in 2017 a special edition of Cherry Coke was produced in China in his honor.

Tomorrowland

A few years ago I was collecting Coca-Cola written in different language scripts in electronic form. With the help of Unicode, Google, Firefox and a refreshingly talented linguist, Sam Giloi, here is the list we compiled:

Arabic (Arabiyya) کوکا کولا
Amharic ኮካ-ኮላ
Armenian* Կոկա-Կոլա
Bengali কোকা-কোলা
Cantonese (Yale)* Hóháu-Hólohk
Cherokee* ᎪᎧ ᎪᎳ
Chinese (bopomofo) ㄎㄜˇㄎㄡˇㄎㄜˇㄌㄜˋ
Chinese (Cyrillic)* Кэкоу-Кэлэ
Chinese (Gwoyeu Romatzyh)* Keekoou-Keeleh
Chinese (IPA)* kʰɤkʰoukʰɤlɤ
Chinese (pinyin) Kěkǒu-Kělè
Chinese (simplified) 可口可乐

Epcot

Chinese (traditional) 可口可樂
Chinese (Wade-Giles) K'ok'ou-K'ole
Elmer Fudd* Coca-Cowa
English (AHD) kō'kəkō'lə
English (Bristol Dialect)* Coca-Colawl
English (IPA American)* koʊkə'koʊlə
English (IPA Australian)* kəʉkə'kəʉlə
English (IPA British)* kəʊkə'kəʊlə
English (IPA Canadian)* kokə'kolə
English (IPA Cockney)* kʌʊlə'kʌʊlə
English (IPA Derry)* kʲokʲə'kʲolə
English (IPA Estuary)* kəʏlə'kəʏlə
English (IPA Philippine)* kokɐ'kolɐ
English (IPA Runglish)* 'koukakoula
English (IPA Scottish)* kokə'kolə
English (IPA Singlish)* kokə'kolə
English (Latin) Coca-Cola
English (Swedish Chef)* Cuca-Cula
English (Yorkshire Dialect)* Coca-Coleur
Esperanto Koka-Kolao
Estonian Koka-Kola
Faux Cyrillic* CФCД CФLД
Georgian კოკა-კოლა
Greek* Κόκα-Κόλα
Gujarati કોકા-કોલા
Gurmukhi ਕੋਕਾ-ਕੌਲਾ
Hebrew קוקה קולה
Hindi (Devanagari) कैका कोला
Inuktitut* ᑰᑲ ᑰᓚ
Japanese (kanji) 古加琥羅 +
Japanese (katakana) コカ・コーラ
Japanese (hiragana) こかこーら
Japanese (kiriji)* Кока-Кōра
Japanese (romaji) Koka-Kōra
Kannada ಕುಕಾ ಕುಲಾ
Khmer* កូកា- កូឡា
Klingon* qoqa-qola
Korean (Hangul) 코카-콜라
Korean (romanization) Koka-Korra
Lao ໂກກະ-ໂກຣະ
Malayalam കൊകാ കൊലാ
Maori Kōka-Kōla
Nepali* कोका-कोला

Animal Kingdom

Oriya କୋକା-କୋଲା
Punjabi ਕੋਕ-ਕੋਲ
Runes* ᚳᚩᚳᚪᚳᚩᛚᚪ
Russian (Cyrillic) Кока-Кола
San (Bushman language)* Koka-Koℓa
Shavian (Shaw)* kOka-kOla
Sinhala ෙකාකා-ෙකාලා
Syriac* ܟܘܟܐ ܟܘܠܐ
Tamil கொகா கொலா
Telugu కొకా కొలా
Tengwar (English)*  
Tengwar (Quenya)*  
Tengwar (Sindarin)*  
Thai โคคา-โคล่า
Tibetan ཀོཀཱ-ཀོལཱ
Vietnamese* Côcá-Côla
Yiddish* קאקאקאלא
Zulu Koka-Kola
Zürich German (Züridüdsch)* Gogi

+ I received the following comment from a reader:

Hi, my name is Yasuo and I'm a private historian of Coca-Cola in Japan. We Japanese don't know "Japanese (kiriji)" and never use it. Instead of that, "Japanese (hiragana)" should be added to the list. Spelling Coca-Cola in Japanese (hiragana) is: こかこーら. Trademarks of "コカコーラ","こかこーら","古加琥羅"were registered in Japan by the Coca-Cola Export Corporation on September 21, 1951. Since we Japanese use only katakana for the Western name, however, only katakana has actually been used for Coca-Cola with a character of "‧" in the middle as "コカ‧コーラ". (The pronounce is [kokɑkɔːlɑ].) Usage of the Kanji 古加琥羅 and the hiragana こかこーら were observed only for novelties in Uniter States, such as "world tray" etc. Before the World War II when Coca-Cola bottling business had not been established in Japan and the product had been sold as just an imported product, varied spellings of Coca-Cola were used such as "コカコラ","コカ‧コラ","コカ、コラ",;"コカコーラ","コカ‧コーラ","コカコオラ".The most popular one among them was "コカコラ"