Soob

Politics, Foreign Policy, Current Events and Occasional Outbursts Lacking Couth

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Not as Strange as Moon Unit...

Apparently some Chinese are taking such an extensive amount of pride in the upcoming Beijing Olympics that they're naming their children accordingly.

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.

The vast majority of people named Aoyun are male, the newspaper said. Only six live in Beijing. The report didn't say where the others live.

Names related to the Olympics don't just stop with "Olympics." More than 4,000 Chinese share their names with the Beijing Games mascots, the "Five Friendlies."

The names are Bei Bei (880 people), Jing Jing (1,240), Huan Huan (1,063), Ying Ying (624) and Ni Ni (642). When put together, the phrase translates to "Beijing welcomes you!"

I guess with around 1 billion people sharing 129 family names you have to get a bit creative in naming children.