A boy named @
daizi
August 16, 2007, 08:53 PM posted in General DiscussionI suppose this story is old news in China, but I found it curious. Dai
What's in @ name? Chinese watchdog queries parents' choice
Fred Attewill and agencies
Thursday August 16, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
A Chinese couple who wanted a distinctive name for their baby boy and came up with the symbol @ have earned a rebuke from the government's language watchdog.
The parents claimed the commonly used email symbol, pronounced in English as "at", sounded like the Mandarin for "love him" when spoken by Chinese.
But the government's state language commission has taken a dim view of the attempt to break the mould in a country where almost 90% of the country's 1.3 billion people share just 129 surnames.
The father "said the whole world uses it to write e-mails and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'", Li Yuming, the vice director of the commission, said today.
Many Chinese use the English word "at" in pronouncing the symbol @, and when said with a drawn out "t" it sounds like "ai ta", or "love him" in Mandarin. Article Continues >>
waitingroom
April 27, 2009, 05:57 PMI don't think that the goverment's intervention is strange at all. Perhaps in the US it's ok to call your child Apple, Fairy, etc ;) but most countries have some kind of law to prevent ridiculous choices. Even more so in the case of punctuation. (My own name seems to be odd enough already: "Hi, I'm Saraj." "Sarah?" "No, Saraj." "Serach?" "No....")
rainmaker
August 17, 2007, 04:08 AMno becoz hes a faggot
ethan
August 17, 2007, 04:57 AMI read about this on shanghaiist. Very strange!
ivyzhang
August 17, 2007, 07:35 AMparents always want to give their children an unique name.
daizi
August 18, 2007, 08:24 PMYeah, but how often does the government intervene in the baby-naming process?
daizi
August 17, 2007, 02:51 AMImagine if they ever had a rock star in China like Prince. Would he ever be able to become the Rock Star Formerly Know As Prince?
daizi
August 18, 2007, 09:04 PMMaybe if your surname were, say, Cadet, then it might make sense. Though, the "authorities" would probably make you write it out.
aeflow
August 18, 2007, 11:36 PMThose darn authorities. They keep telling me to remove my tin-foil tophat when posing for official ID photos.
user18844
August 19, 2007, 02:46 AMSimilar story from New Zealand: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6937327.stm
babliku
August 19, 2007, 09:45 AMhaha aeflow, "Hi, my name is open inverted comma."
dec1980
April 27, 2009, 04:50 PMI know it seems a bit stange the government intervening but i think its just common sense. Also this poor kid would never be able to get an email address if they sucessfully registered his name as @.
aeflow
August 18, 2007, 08:50 PMI doubt there's a country in the world where you could legally register a name consisting of puncuation. There's nothing really China-specific about that. Otherwise, maybe I'll change my name to the ASCII space character. A: "Please fill in your name on this form" B: "I already did"
Lantian
August 17, 2007, 02:03 AM@， how r u? :) 88