As Armenian number ten Henrikh Mkhitaryan arrived from Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday, and with the first goal and an assist in his first friendly appearance for Borussia Dortmund impressed the fans, the German tabloids slipped along giving nicknames for the new player, Novosti-Armenia reports Friday.
One of the most often-used and funny nicknames appeared to be “Mücke” that means “mosquito” in English. The German “news guys” shortened Henrikh’s last name to “Mücke” after one of the football commentators had mispronounced the footballer’s last name as “Mücketaryan.” The interesting thing is that “Mücke” appeared in the headlines of Die Welt edition too, which has pretty good reputation in Germany.
This nickname agiotage around the 24-year-old midfielder has left his fans divided into two groups: the first group is bristling at “Mücke” name claiming Mkhitaryan doesn’t actually mind to be called Heno, the second group (minority though) say Mücke sounds pretty good for “unpronounceable” Mkhitaryan. There is also another group of fans calling him “Miki, ” but they are too few.
The things are getting more interesting as Ukrainian sport reporter Denis Trubetskoy uploads a video on Youtube explaining how to pronounce “Henrikh Mkhitaryan.” In just three days, over 30,000 users have watched it unleashing active discussions through the comments.
The only thing that makes all German fans agree is that they will have to get used to pronouncing the last name of our Heno. But given the names of Borussia’s other players, such as Jakub Błaszczykowski, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, it won’t take long to learn how to pronounce Mkhitaryan.
Borussia Dortmund paid 27.5 million euros to Shakhtar Donetsk for Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan was born on 21 January 1989 in Yerevan, Armenia. He transferred to Shakhtar Donetsk on 30 August 2010. He played 72 matches in the Ukrainian Premier League scoring 38 goals. In total, Heno played 106 matches for Shakhtar scoring 46 goals. Mkhitaryan also scored record 25 goals at the last Ukrainian Premier League thus assisting Shakhtar to win gold double in Ukraine.