Did Fisk just teach me about pens?

I was watching the Australian comedy Fisk on Netflix when a scene stopped me. A client casually rewrote parts of a will with what they called a “Biro”. I paused, wondering—what’s a Biro?

Turns out, that’s what people in Australia and Britain call a ballpoint pen. The word comes from László Bíró, the Hungarian-Argentinian who patented the modern version in the 1930s.

And here’s where it gets funny. The same everyday pen goes by different names depending on where you are. In India and Singapore, it’s a ballpoint pen. In the US, it’s just a pen, or a Bic if you go by the brand. In Japan, it’s ボールペン (booru pen). In Germany, it’s Kugelschreiber, which sounds like a machine part until you realise it just means “ball writer”. In Spain, it’s bolígrafo, or simply boli. And in Swahili, it’s kalamu ya biki / biki (literally “pen of Bic”).

Biro, Bic, boli or ballpoint… at the end of the day, it’s just that pen you can never find when the courier guy shows up.