Prince Harry Has a New Job Title, and It Means ‘Penis’ in Japanese

After he left the United Kingdom for California, Prince Harry found a new job last month as the “chief impact officer” at a mental health start-up in San Francisco. 

In some British newspapers, his title is known in short as Chimpo, which, as it happens, is Japanese slang for penis.

The coincidence elicited a few harmless laughs in Japan, home to the world’s oldest monarchy and where Prince Harry is generally viewed favorably.

“Prince Harry just got the title of Chimpo. Well, he is the Duke of Sus-SEX, so you have to give him that kind of name,” a Japanese Twitter user said. 

It’s not uncommon for names to carry completely different meanings when translated into another language. 

Sega, the Japanese video game company, is slang for masturbation in Italian. Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, means “penis” in Georgian. And VICE’s food-centric channel Munchies, if translated into Japanese, means “man cheese”—definitely not something you’d want to look at over dinner.

While “chief impact officer” sounds like one of those bullshit jobs, the alternative meaning of the acronym, rarely used in real life, says more about British tabloids than Harry.

“I saw the name came from ‘The Sun,’” said Shinnosuke Ogata, a writer and stay-at-home father in Tokyo. “People know that his title isn’t really ‘penis,’ they’re just having a laugh,” he told VICE World News.

All jokes aside, Prince Harry is an often well-received royal in Japan.

He’s made numerous visits to the country. On his most recent trip, during the Rugby World Cup in 2019, a Japanese student called him “handsome.”

When his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, revealed some of the racism she experienced within the royal family, Japanese citizens applauded her and Harry’s courage for leaving their royal life and condemned British tabloids for constantly hounding the couple. 

Their own royal princess, however, has enjoyed far less public support.

Japanese Princess Mako has been engaged to her college boyfriend Kei Komuro since 2017. But despite the couple’s desire to marry, the Japanese public has cast a skeptical eye toward their union, citing the financial troubles of the mother of Komuro, who is considered a commoner.

Komuro, a student at Fordham University’s law school in New York, had to release a 28-page statement earlier this month to address the money dispute between his mother and her ex-fiance. 

The couple originally wanted to get married in November 2018, but their plan was derailed by reports of the financial feud. They have not announced a new date for their wedding.

Follow Hanako Montgomery on Twitter and Instagram.