Tetraphobia… Fear of the Number Four

Tetraphobia… Fear of the Number Four

Hey now, I hope you didn't walk under any ladders, let a black cat cross your path or step on a crack – break your mother's back on your way here today.

See that pile of 13 kinds of doughnuts over there? And the 13 kinds of coffee on the other side? Help yourself. Folks are really superstitious, don't you think?

Here in Asia, if anything, superstitions run at a much higher level than anywhere else – except maybe Africa and the West Indies . Ghosts abound as well…

Tetraphobia is the fear of the number four. Why? Because phonetically it sounds like the word for "death" in Korean, Chinese and Japanese, as well as in many other East Asian and some Southeast Asian languages. It is not uncommon for buildings (including offices, apartments, hotels) to lack floors with the number 4. Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia's 1xxx-9xxx series of mobile phones does not include any model numbers beginning with a 4. In Japan , this is for the same reason - the sound of the number ( ? , shi) has the same sound as the Japanese word for "death" ( ? , shi).

Even when I was selling real estate in Toronto , I could never show houses with the number 4 in the address to Chinese clients. They wouldn't even go in. You won't see many Chinese licence plates with 4 in them either. 8 is the lucky number in China and Hong Kong . In fact, the licence place 8888 reportedly sold for 1 million HK dollars. I believe it. In Thailand , 9 is the fortuitous number because the current king is the 9 th in his line to hold the throne.

The picture above shows the elevator buttons in a Shanghai Apartment building. Notice there are no # 4, 13 th or 14 th floors. There is however a -1 floor which might be the basement, d'you think?

See ya! Be careful crossing the street, eh!

Bob

Paul from Toyko comments:

In Japan , the number 4 is sometimes considered bad luck because one pronunciation of the word sounds like the Japanese word for "death."

We do have 4th floors in buildings, but the superstition does manifest itself in one meaningful way. When invited to a Japanese wedding, it is customary to give the new couple an envelope with 2 crisp ¥10,000 notes in it. This is to help offset the cost of the usually very expensive wedding party. (I should mention that husbands and wives are not always invited as many of the guests are business colleagues or the like. Or teachers from the past, and that is where this has affected me.)

In the case where a husband and a wife are invited together, as often happened to me, that would mean 4 ¥10,000 notes, but 4 is an unlucky number so four of them is a no-no. That forces the choice of giving three of them, and looking like a cheapskate, or giving five which is what most couples do. So, at todays's current exchange rates, that would be about US$615 or Thai Baht 18,000.

I kid you not. Talk about bad luck. That is what a wedding invitation can be in this country.

Bob's reply:

Yikes! Elope kids…and good luck to ya!