Olympics fever in China – Names

Chinese people are proud of the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Beijing Daily reported that nearly 3,500 children have been named for the event.

Most of the 3,491 people with the name “Aoyun,” meaning Olympics, were born around the year 2000, as Beijing was bidding to host the 2008 Summer Games, the Beijing Daily reported, citing information from China’s national identity card database. (CBS )

It is told that most of people named Aoyun are male and only six of them live in Beijing.

“Olympics” is not the only name related to the games. Other Chinese parents of more than 4,000 kids thought Beijing Games mascots, the “Five Friendlies” would sound better.

Other names related to Olympic games listed by the newspaper are: Bei Bei (880 people), Jing Jing (1,240), Huan Huan (1,063), Ying Ying (624) and Ni Ni (642). The phrase translates to “Beijing welcomes you!”

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In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, 87 percent share the same 129 family names. That’s why 5,598 people have the same name as basketball player Yao Ming and 18,462 share a moniker with star hurdler Liu Xiang, according to the Beijing Daily report.

I posted a couple of other posts on unique names – New Zealand 4real later named Superman, Chinese with name “@” (AT). There is another report about a Chinese couple wanting to name their child “1A”. In another blog I saw a news about Venezuela government which was so worried that they were going to prepare a list of “valid” names but were taken back when child protection official’s warned.