Talk:Zayre

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Zayre Gut[edit]

The "Zayre Güt" story might be more plausible if it were described as a play on or corruption of sehr güt which is the actual German phrase for "very good."

Zayre was once called "Congo(Leopoldsville)??" Is this true? Seems like a REALLY un-catchy name for a store. Ed Sanville 23:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm deleting that Congo bit. It's not coherent, it's extremely implausible, and there's nothing out on teh interwebs to even kinda-sorta back up this fanciful story. PeteJayhawk 18:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I found where the vandal inserted that phony origin story. Reverted back to before it. The most dangerous vandals are the ones who put things like that in... it can take weeks before sombody noticed. Ed Sanville 19:35, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I worked for Zayre in the late 1980s, and I remember the company info telling us it the name came from the German "sehr gut" (or "zehr gut")--but I never heard that the store was supposed to be named "Zayre Gut" and they didn't have enough money for the whole sign. That seems almost unlikely. Anyone else remember details about this? Indy 17:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am the one who first placed the "Zayre Gut" story on this page, orginally referring to it as "German." I worked for the company from 1975-1978, and the "sign story" was one of the first things we were taught during our introductory training. I don't know German from Yiddish from any variant in between, and while I can't verify that "it" happened just that way, I can attest to the fact that it is the story that the Zayre Corporation wanted it's employee to believe.

The below comment is in poor taste or just very uninformed. I am a certified (Goethe institute) German speaker with a degree in German, but the point is that Zayre is a Yiddish spelling of the German word "sehr". Yiddish is a language which was heavily based upon German but varied greatly from traditional or standard German. Vowels often shift, words are generally spelled differently; Yiddish is NOT German but another language with many parallels. Think of Haitian Creole vs. French, for example. Also, spelling in Yiddish is flexible and phonetically based, as it is traditionally written with the Hebrew alphabet. Calling Yiddish a corruption of German is an insult to a culture and a language that struggles to survive. Zayre is a very likely spelling of that word in Yiddish, and is a plausible story behind the name of the store. In addition, whereas Jews have long lived in Massachusetts, it is also plausible that the store owners might spread the subtle disinformation that the name is "German" merely to avoid any negative marking of the store as being Jewish-owned. Joewelcome (talk) 20:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC) JoeWelcome[reply]

Either way, the passage is not verified, and was removed from the article with this diff. Thus this is a moot point. SchuminWeb (Talk) 00:13, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of the name "Zayre" was explained by longtime New York Times retail writer Isadore Barmash in a 1985 article. One day while the Feldbergs and advertising consultant Bert Stern were tossing around names for the new store, Max Feldberg took a telephone call. He concluded the call with the phrase "zehr gut" or "very good." Stern said, "Zehr? Where? We need a nice sounding name." The men looked at each other, realizing that they had just found the name. Since the word is Yiddish, it could be spelled any number of ways using the Latin alphabet, and 'Zayre' was chosen. Although "zehr gut" is Yiddish, the article simply calls it a Jewish expression, which it is. The explanation and accompanying reference have been added to the article. Jared82ca (talk) 17:11, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Northeast?[edit]

The article refers to Zayre as being in the Northeast US. There were Zayre stores in South Florida as early as 1975. L0b0t (talk) 23:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC) I worked at Zayre from 1973 to 1978 There were not only stores in the Northeast but also stores for sure in Ohio and also I believe in Illinois that must be verified by someelse. There were about 10 stores in Maine — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.49.35.188 (talk) 19:56, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By the mid-1960s, Zayre had a presence in nearly every state east of the Mississippi...Michigan, Kentucky, and Mississippi are three states that I have not verified as having had a Zayre store. Jared82ca (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In 1965, there was a Zayre store in the Hyde Park Plaza shopping mall in Hyde Park, Cincinnati, Ohio. The building at that location now is the Oakley Community Center. 174.25.29.187 (talk) 01:01, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Attribution[edit]

Text and references copied from List of defunct department stores of the United States to Zayre, See former article's history for a list of contributors. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:20, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]