The Sorrows of Young Werther
The source of the company's name is neither Korean nor Japanese, or even Chinese, but German. Shin Kyuk-ho was impressed with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (1774) and named his newly founded company Lotte after the character Charlotte in the novel ("Charlotte" is also the name of a new brand of deluxe movie theatres run by Lotte). Lotte's current marketing slogan in Japan is .