Good Characters, Inc. Blog

As China gears up to host the Olympic Games, it has created five mascots. They are cartoon figures of a fish, a panda, a Tibetan antelope, a swallow, and the Olympic flame. They represent five features of nature: sea, forest, fire, earth, and sky. Each mascot has a two-syllable name in English, and combining the first syllables from all five produces the greeting “Beijing Huan Ying Ni,” which means “Beijing welcomes you.” They seemed the perfect characters for the international event.

But what to call them collectively in English? The Olympic committee settled on the name “Five Friendlies” for the friendly little creatures. But the name caused confusion and negative feelings. “Friendly” is a word in English, but “friendlies” is not. It sounds like “friendless,” something no one wants to be. And when written, it looks like “friend lies,” something no one wants his or her friend to do.

So the Olympic committee renamed the mascots “Fuwa.” Combining “fu,” good fortune, with “wa,” baby, the word means a good and fortunate child. It is a popular expression in southern China. Fuwa may not mean “friendly,” but it is certainly a more user-friendly term for five very cute mascots.

Links:

• Olympic Friendlies Come Under Fire
• Mascots Renamed “Fuwa”
• Chinese Olympic Mascots Renamed as Transliterated Pinyin Name Fuwa (Chinese)
  奥运福娃改译名 传递信息更丰富