Next summer, the
Olympic Games will be held in
Beijing and China is understandably very proud and excited to be the host country. This sense of national pride is reflected in a
news article I saw today which says that about 3500 Chinese kids have been given the Chinese name for Olympic - "Aoyun" which I think looks like this in
simplified Chinese characters - 奥林匹克 (although I could be wrong).
Additionally, many Chinese have named their children after the Beijing Olympic Games mascots, known as the "
Five Friendlies." These cute characters (and the corresponding number of people names after them) are: Bei Bei (880 people), Jing Jing (1,240), Huan Huan (1,063), Ying Ying (624) and Ni Ni (642). When the Five Friendlies names are combined, the phrase means "Beijing welcomes you!"
To the Chinese, names are very important and usually have some meaning associated with the person. Traditionally, certain surnames have been very common and it is estimated that about 87% of China's 1.3 billion population share just 129 surnames. That's why there are so many people named Li, Chen and Wang among other
common names. Interestingly, there are about 5600
Yao Mings (姚明) in China due to the popularity of the NBA baskletball star. However, Chinese are increasingly trying to come up with unique first names (which come last when written or spoken) for their children in order to express more individuality.
On a more local note, I am one of 2 David Mosers at
Lingnan University. In addition to myself, there happens to be another unrelated David Moser (also from the United States) who is an English tutor here at Lingnan this semester. This has been a source of confusion for both of us as students and faculty get us mixed up. I don't think its too likely that many Chinese people are going to start naming their babies after us though.
The NBA season has just started, but in China the championship is tomorrow when the Houston Rockets play the Milwaukee Bucks. More importantly (to the many Chinese NBA fans), China's Yao Ming goes up against China's rookie sensation Yi Jianlian. American basketball fans know that both are Chinese and both are tall although Yao has 6 inches over his younger compatriot Yi, who's only 7'0". Yao also has more experience and has proven himself to be one of the top centers in the NBA. Yi has just begun his first NBA season, but is off to a very good start. While the two Chinese players will be opponents tomorrow, they will be teammates next summer on the Chinese national team in the Beijing Olympics and should be a formidable frontline. The game will be televised in China at 9 a.m. and is predicted to be watched by over 200 million Chinese viewers. The audience will be much more than most of the world's biggest sporting events and I imagine the NBA is saying China, its 意想不到 (Fantastic)!
