Immigration and retail trade both raise, in different but key ways, the question of the relationship between people and space. The construction of ethnicity involves modes of consumption, but also ways in which retailing is distributed. The appropriation of space by signs that denote foreignness is what enables a particular neighbourhood to become known as a quarter of immigration. But what can we say about the role of shops and businesses in the representation of ethnicity? This paper investigates the case of inter-war Paris from this perspective. It argues that this question cannot be answered simply from representational sources, such as contemporary accounts or photographs, and it draws on an indication less correlated with the spatial dimension and yet apparently still constitutive of a representation of alterity in the city: shop signs. The indicator provided by trading names makes it possible to connect discursive sources with sources bearing on practices, by showing the emergence of an issue of identity associated with trading names and designations. A choice that essentially reflects a commercial strategy also appears as the product of a logic of affiliation.