

Why Your Business Needs a Chinese Name - bike_to_work
http://mygengo.com/about-us/blog/chinese-branding/

======
Adaptive
It's foolish to claim that bing has only claimed a small market share due to
homophonic issues. Don't think for a second that the Bing brand wasn't
overthought on every level. I can guarantee that they considered the Chinese
localization before launch. Bing has enough problems gaining market share in
markets where Bing has a vaguely positive sound to it.

For bona fides, I worked on many projects where we developed localized Chinese
names for new and existing global brands. We charged through the nose for
this. The numbers you are looking for end in six zeros. This was a couple
years ago when China was even more of a black box than it is now and there was
a sense of herd panic about getting in. License to print money. Dumb, dumb,
dumb.

Yes, you should worry about the transliteration, but if you are a western
based company and want to move into the chinese market, you have much much
much bigger concerns, namely getting shut out by any given joint venture
partner that you shack up with, with onerous "technology sharing" terms which
results in your company getting pillaged and left on the side of the (market)
road. Or watch as your market is crowded out by a home grown tech-alike
(supported by the chinese government).

And this stuff is way overthought most of the time. Coke isn't exactly a
positive association on any level (drug, sounds like a bit like slang for
other unmentionables, coal). I could go on all day spewing this but
ultimately, as weird as some names are, as much as brand consultants like to
BS clients with this rubbish, it is a much richer set of factors that
determine brand & business success in the market.

~~~
ScottBurson
_Bing has enough problems gaining market share in markets where Bing has a
vaguely positive sound to it._

Heh, I'm curious what market that might be. The only associations I can come
up with are bing cherries and Bing Crosby. Neutral at best :-)

~~~
rflrob
I think of quiz-shows (like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me), where there's often a
bell to indicate a correct answer. Also (and probably related), Bingo.

------
w1ntermute
> This search engine giant — known as 必应 (biying) — also found it difficult to
> break into the Chinese market, partly due to its unfortunate choice of a
> name that sounds similar to the Chinese word for sickness: 病 (bing). So far,
> it's only managed to monopolize less than five percent of the market.

It's unfortunate when someone who knows nothing about a topic decides to start
making assumptions. For example, bing has _many_ different meanings depending
on the tone used:

bīng/bing1: 兵,冰,掤,栟,檳

bǐng/bing3: 丙,屏,怲,昺,柄,炳,秉,稟,苪,邴,鉼,鞞,餅

bìng/bing4: 並,併,寎,并,摒,病

The one that means sickness is only the last one.

~~~
riobard
Unfortunately the pronunciation of "Bing" in English is more often the same as
the last one in Chinese, and frankly none of the characters you listed above,
maybe except 冰 (means ice) and 饼 (means cake), has any good implications at
all, let alone relevance to searching.

"Microsoft has Bing", translated to Chinese 微软有病 (literally "Microsoft has
sickness", or "Microsoft is sick"), is a serious joke about Bing's launch in
China. That's not to say it is a marketing mistake, though. At least it gets
people's attention. It's wrong to attribute Bing's failure to capture
significant market share to its Chinese name, as others suggested in the
comments.

Google (谷歌) has similar problems in its Chinese branding. The name 谷歌 (valley
song? WTF?) is an absolutely non-sense for a search engine.

Local brands are usually better in this regard. For example, Baidu's name (百度)
comes from a famous Chinese poem by 辛弃疾 which depicts a scene where a guy is
searching for his lover in a crowded festival night. Search engine? No
problem!

Here's the complete poem if you can read Chinese:

《青玉案·元夕》 辛弃疾(宋)

东风夜放花千树，更吹落星如雨。宝马雕车香满路，凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞。

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，笑语盈盈暗香去。众里寻他千百度，蓦然回首，那人却在，灯火阑珊处。

PS. If you are careful enough you will find BMW's Chinese name 宝马 (means
precious horse) also appeared in this poem, thought I'm pretty sure this is
not the first use of the term. Ancient Chinese nobels rely heavily on horses
for transportation, which matches BMW's high-end status perfectly.

~~~
vorg
I always thought 百度 literally means 100 degrees, as in Celsius, the boiling
point of water. Maybe there's a secondary meaning saying "This search engine
is hot".

------
alanning
My two favorites: Coke and BMW.

As sdz points out in his/her comment, whoever came up with Coke's name 'ke kou
ke le' did an amazingly clever job while still retaining much of the sound of
the original. [1]

Yet to be mentioned is BMW, one of my personal favorites. Their Chinese name,
宝马 (bao ma), literally means 'Treasured Horse' [2] but its more than that. 宝宝
(bao bao) is a common way to address a baby, something like 'little treasure'
but not so pretentious in Chinese. And there are stories (I think from the 3
Kingdoms era) which refer to a character's reliable and sturdy horse as, "so-
and-so's Bao Ma". Really a great name.

Coincidentally, as you might expect, its very hard for non-Chinese to
understand the nuances of Chinese names. I have a modest command of Mandarin
but some names that I think are quite interesting (Sprite - Xue Bi - ~Snow
Jade) are not very well thought of by my Chinese relatives. Others like Subway
(sai bai wei) which I thought was kinda wonky (100 Flavors?) are big hits as
the article mentions.

1\. Coke - <http://goodcharacters.com/blog/blog.php?id=79>

2\. BMW Bao Ma - <http://goodcharacters.com/blog/blog.php?id=66>

[Update: added link to explanation of Coke's transliteration]

~~~
riobard
FYI, Subway (赛百味, Sai Bai Wei) would mean "better than other 100 flavors" in
Chinese, which isn't true at all: for most Chinese, subways are not that
tasty. But the name is great!

------
sid6376
In India, bing is bing, subway is subway and coca cola is coca cola.
Irrespective of that Google has around 89% market share. Considering other
search engines, bing would have as much market share as in China. Coca Cola
and its Indian counterpart(Thums-up) have around 20% market share. Subway is
as popular and though I dont have the numbers based on a cursory search, I am
sure the numbers are again comparable.

The argument in the article doesnt hold. These companies/products have
succeeded/failed not because of their name but because they were good.

Speaking of names, IPad was probably not the best chosen name. It hasn't
stopped it from being a success.

~~~
yaix
India speaks mostly Indo-European languages.

Chinese is a Sino-Tibetian language and much different. Most Chinese would
have a hard time remembering Western names, let alone pronouncing them.

------
impendia
In reverse: I read a story once about a Japanese businesswoman who wanted to
open a business in America. She was inspired by Bridgestone (the tire
company), named after the founder Shojiro Ishibashi (ishi = stone, bashi =
bridge).

Her name was Kawakami; translating this into English she decided to name her
company Up River.

------
mrtron
I think it is deceiving to compare apples to oranges this way. Coca-cola is
highly popular due to its branding across the board, not just the Chinese name
they chose.

McDonalds is left out, but is just translated to 麦当劳 which sounds as close as
possible to the syllables mac-don-alds (Màidāngláo). McDonalds is much more
popular and prevalent in Asia than Subway, despite their 'worse' name that
means nothing. The television commercials for McDonalds capitalize on the
foreign nature of the company usually showing white people eating.

~~~
PakG1
Seriously about usually showing white people in commercials? That's not what I
see here, and I live in China right now. McDonald's and KFC, the two foreign
fast food leaders, seem to have done a fairly good job localizing. Heck, I
can't get any apple pies here, only pineapple and taro. And they serve chicken
wings at McDonald's. Chicken wings! :) KFC goes one further, currently
marketing a new Chinese BBQ pork set meal with rice and veggies.

~~~
billpaetzke
Ha. Yep. And in Thailand they serve broccoli pies[1] and corn pies. Weird! :)

[1] [http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
snc6/228089_101002...](http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
snc6/228089_10100220946213845_3400786_51861994_3032657_n.jpg)

------
sdz
I've always loved the Chinese naming for Coke. The article translates it as
"delicious happiness," but it's actually more clever. The first two characters
(ke kou) mean thirsty. The third character is the same as the first but means
"can be" in the context. The fourth character (le) means happy. So all
together, it literally means "[when you are] thirsty, [you] can be happy." As
the other examples in the article show, it's quite easy to do the
transliteration poorly, and a good one is far from inevitable. It's hard not
to appreciate the amount of cleverness that went into "ke kou ke le".

~~~
CoreDumpling
<nitpick>

可口 (kě kǒu) does actually mean "delicious" -- you are thinking of 口渴 (kǒu kě)
which means thirsty

</nitpick>

Admittedly, it is still a superior branding to Pepsi (百事可乐) which literally
translates to "hundred events." Maybe this has something to do with how Pepsi
has about 1/3 as much market share as Coca-Cola has in China [1].

[1] [http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/07/29/coke-sees-chinas-
mark...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/07/29/coke-sees-chinas-market-as-
the-real-thing-for-growth/)

~~~
alanning
<nitpick to your nitpick> 百事 could be translated as "hundred events" but could
also just as easily be literally translated as "hundred things" which is much
closer to its actual meaning: "everything" </nitpick>

Although by the number of promotional events that Pepsi puts on sponsoring
concerts and such, I can very well see how "hundred events" may be closer to
their actual marketing strategy. :)

------
aculver
My favorite part of this article is the comment from the guy who says "this
sounds like it could be a business" and then links to a fully functional
landing page he's already created to gauge interest in that type of business.
He didn't waste any time.

EDIT: Here's his landing page. <http://www.chinesebusinessname.com/>

~~~
dools
Haha yeah glad you liked it, but I wouldn't call it "fully functional"
(although that image in the top left does say "chinese business name" in
Chinese repeated over and over :)

I couldn't resist it and was pretty surprised the domain was available. Even a
search for "chinese business name" in Google doesn't return many results so
maybe I'll do something with it.

I submitted it to HN but I think it's sailed off the newest page and into
oblivion.

I actually just had lunch at my local noodle joint and chatted with the guy
there (who's native Chinese) and we played around with names for my CMS which
is "Decal".

He doesn't have any special training other than being a native speaker but he
was able to come up with a few ideas - he was pretty familiar with the
concept.

Makes me think that actually my best strategy is just going to be to pretty up
that landing page a bit (not too much though :) and just replace that "coming
soon" form with a form that gets details about the business. My mate at the
noodle place said he'd be happy to come up with some names. Start simple,
iterate.

Then I could offer testing on each of the options via Mechanical Turk or
something .... annnyhoo.

------
Triumvark
Baidu is given special state endorsements, permission to skirt copyright laws,
network priority (it's not mysteriously blacked out half the time, because it
plays well with the Communist Party), and allows the Chinese people to use
something distinctly Chinese.

We don't need the world's most attenuated homophone to explain why Baidu is
beating the pants off of Bing.

------
yiran
Just to add to the list, a few other good examples, all meeting the three
criterion in the article:

Carrefour is translated as 家乐福(jia le fu), which means family, happiness and
fortune. The supermarket chain's success was largely due to the name, 'cause
many Chinese people actually think it is a Chinese company.

Pizza Hut as 必胜客(bi sheng ke), which means the winning one; although the name
has not link to pizza or food, it helped to shape Pizza Hut as a premium
brand.

BMW's brand identity(宝马, bao ma) is known as a prestigious horse; Mercedes-
Benz's Chinese name 奔驰(ben chi) means gallop, running with speed, etc. So car
manufacturers do have good tasted for their brand names.

Groupon' s newly picked name is 高朋(gao peng), which means classy friends. Also
a clever choice.

\----

One key trend in the name-picking game in the recent years is that more and
more companies are trying to make their brands actually MEAN something.
Earlier entrants like McDonald's, KFC, Disney, Nike, Adidas, they simply chose
a few characters whose combination replicates the sound but is nevertheless
meaningless. Why? Because more than a decade ago, having such a name
automatically indicates you are a foreign brand, and this is a good thing.
People were naturally drawn to such names, they believed foreign products
stand for quality and premium experience. Also, early entrants are usually the
first in its category to attack the Chinese market, giving them a monopoly
position (sort of). For instance, KFC is known as 肯德基, whose brand image is
not KFC itself but _American Fast Food_ as a concept.

Yet companies who entered the market after 2000, all tried to attach some
implied meaning to a name, or in some other words they all seek localization.
The reasons things have changed are: firstly, more and more foreign brands
entered the market, the monopoly benefits are no longer; in addition, a lot, I
mean really a lot, of local Chinese brands try to mimic the strategy by
crowning themselves a foreign title, which dilutes the whole foreign branding
concept; finally, a growing number of English speaking population (especially
the ones with considerable pocket size) demands difference, they are aware of
Starbucks, but mostly remembers the brand as 星巴克, a clever enough translation.

------
wtvanhest
With limited resources, and a tough enough time running startups to begin
with, putting the burden of naming it something that adheres to Chinese
culture in the off chance you expand there seems like a huge waste of effort
and resources.

I know that many people think that because China has so many people that it
must be a market you are in, but I would argue that focusing on the US market
(if you are US based) probably makes far more sense. If you really get big in
the US, you can try to go to other markets and you could name the company a
chinese name and market it in china as a separate division. Most likely more
would need to be changed than the name.

Look at the way Netflix has grown for example. I believe they are a shining
example of doing it right at home, then focusing on international markets.

~~~
robert_mygengo
I generally agree with this. I think it's just a suggestion that it's worth
thinking about if you're at all considering Chinese market entry, instead of
assuming your name will just "work".

~~~
wtvanhest
Robert, Good point. It is an important thing to think about if you enter the
Chinese market.

------
dongsheng
Besides the business names, I am surprised to see all major operation systems
don't have proper translations in chinese, including Microsoft windows, Mac OS
X and Linux. It's hard to market these products to elder people.

~~~
riobard
Windows actually have great Chinese translations. They are not official, and
some of them are really stupid (but funny!), e.g.:

Windows 3.2 -> Win32 -> 瘟32

Windows 95 -> Win95 -> 瘟95

Windows XP -> XP -> 叉屁

Windows 7 -> Win7 -> 瘟7

As long as Microsoft sticks with the pattern "Windows + something short", it's
fine for most people to shorten it to just "win-something short".

Linux the term itself doesn't seem to have a translation, as most of Linux
users seem to be able to pronounce the term in English (but they do fight over
which way to pronounce the "i" sound). Various distros have official Chinese
translations.

Mac OS X is the most stupid one to pronounce in Chinese, and many would
pronounce the "X" as |eks|, not "ten". So many Mac users prefers to just say
the "Apple operating system".

~~~
dongsheng
> Various distros have official Chinese translations.
    
    
      Debian -> 大便
      Ubuntu -> 俺不土
      Gentoo -> 真土

~~~
redcap
While I don't know about Chinese, in Japanese 大 means 'large' and 便 can be
read as 'faeces'.

So perhaps the name for Debian in Chinese is actually "big poo".

~~~
dongsheng
Yep, just a joke people made to laugh at the pronunciation of Debian is the
same as "big poo" in chinese, but we love Debian of course ;)

------
rhygar
More importantly, your business needs to be hard to copy.

------
nrofkahr
There is nothing wrong with not having any meaning. I lived in China for 10
years, and frankly if it's American, the Chinese will buy it.

Chinese names and English names are completely incompatible, go with sounds
over meaning, but be sure that if there is a meaning behind the sounds that
they don't mean something ridiculous.

David translates to Da Wei which also means Large Toilet if you get the tones
wrong...

------
jhancock
Its tough finding a good name. I've done it twice with my own entities. Even
if you don't need to worry so much about consumer branding, its hard to find
something you like that is not taken...choices get rejected for being too
similar with existing registrations.

------
Joakal
I understand a name can be important, but the article lacks how to go about
finding a good name. Even if you hear a phrase means something good, it may
mean something else to another culture. How would a person go to finding out
if a brand name sucks?

In my opinion, mygengo should have offered this as a service as well as ask
for suggestions for their own Chinese name.

Also, don't forget the slogans, even if they are in English:
<http://www.i18nguy.com/translations.html>

------
ww520
It's hard enough already to name product/company in English, considering
trademark and hostname availability.

------
njloof
Should mygengo name themselves "买跟给"?

~~~
nrofkahr
I like it. Sounds like the English name and means 'buy a lot' But as mygengo
is a revolutionary translation service not a retail store.

On the other hand...finding a Chinese name really is a pill for all companies.
This may be the best name yet.

------
Mz
They include the current version of 'Coca Cola' in Chinese: _the brand
included a description of their product within its name, calling itself 可口可乐
(kekoukele) — “delicious happiness”._

They leave out the original version of Coca Cola translated into Chinese:
_“bite the wax tadpole.”_ (Sorry, couldn't find a phonetic version.)

[http://www.coca-
colaconversations.com/my_weblog/2008/03/bite...](http://www.coca-
colaconversations.com/my_weblog/2008/03/bite-the-wax-ta.html)

Seems a shame they left it out. I read it years ago and still remembered it
well enough to google an example (though I was thinking "bite the toad"). It
made quite the impression on me. It's an excellent example of how wrong this
can go.

~~~
friendstock
This seems like an anecdote that non-Chinese tell, but I've never heard about
it in Chinese, nor have I seen the Chinese characters. Can anyone verify this?

~~~
pmiller2
Snopes.com calls it "partially true":
<http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.asp>

