So ibis has arrived in Singapore and it’s got everyone talking, including how it’s pronounced.

At the official opening ceremony of the hotel this week, Peter Hook, Accor’s general manager communications, said “I-bis”, while his chairman, Michael Issenberg (pictured left), said “Ee-bis.” (Apparently, in Australia, they say it the Hook way and in France, they say it with an “Ee”.)

Guest of honour Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, S. Iswaran, like the true diplomat he is, alternated between the two in his speech, I believe.

Hook, who played MC, could not resist delivering the final punch. After all the I-ing and ee-ing, he said, “You wouldn’t say Ee-ssenberg, you’d say I–ssenberg.”

Oh, by the way, the minister’s name is pronounced “Ees-waran”.

The taxi driver who drove me to the hotel however had his own version. When I told him, “I-bis, the new hotel on Bencoolen Street”, he yelled, above the noise of the television embedded in the back of the front seats, “IB what?”

“I-B-I-S,” I spelt out. “New hotel. Bencoolen.”

“I-B-I-F?” he yelled over Rod Stewart singing, “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

“S,” I screeched, thinking “No.”

“M?” he screamed.

The bar in the ibis Singapore on Bencoolen

Feeling I was getting into hotter and hotter alphabet soup with each exchange, I asked if he would call HQ to ask if they knew where “the hotel” was. That sparked off a lively conversation in Hokkien, about which I will not go into details, suffice it to say it went nowhere.

Which meant I was going nowhere. Finally, I called a friend who told me, “Tell him it’s before Fortune Centre.”

The taxi driver of course knows that. Fortune is a good name in Chinese.

To my bad fortune though, he was on the wrong side of the road when we saw the ibis sign. He screeched to a halt. “Wa,” he said excitedly. “New hotel. Very nice.”

He had meanwhile dropped me off at the Hawaii Hostel and Summer View Hotel, two places that must be wondering what’s an exotic bird like the ibis doing in their neighbourhood?

The ibis, in case you didn’t know, is a long-legged wading bird. It has a long down curved bill, usually feeds as a group, probing mud for food items. According to Wikipedia, it is pronounced “ai-bis”.

And oh, by the way, in case you aren’t confused enough, Accor spells ibis with a lower-case “i” in front. I am not sure whether that’s Australian or French.