Good Characters, Inc. Blog

Bloomberg has an article about Google’s Chinese name titled China Can’t Spell G-O-O-G-L-E as Search Engine Falters as Verb. Here are some points from the article and some comments:

1. “Google is struggling to become a verb in China.”
    
   No matter how hard Google struggles, Google’s Chinese name will never become a verb in China. The Chinese translation of Google means “harvesting song.” It does not have verb potential.
    
2. “G-O-O-G-L-E is not of normal Chinese spelling and people don’t pronounce it right.”
    
   This is not a factor because, as with any English term, the Chinese have to learn how to spell it. And it’s easy to remember the word Google.
    
3. “China, the world’s second-largest Internet market with 162 million users, may overtake the U.S. in three to five years.”
    
4. “Google last year acquired the ‘G.cn’ domain so users who misspell the company’s name still get directed to its Chinese-language Web site ‘Guge,’ or ‘harvesting song.’ The adoption of the name in 2006 prompted criticism that it was a song about something going downhill because ‘gu’ also means valley.”
    
   G.cn is one of the shortest domain names in the world.
    
5. “It’s a name that would appear to have been picked by someone who doesn’t know Chinese,” said Liu Bin, an analyst at Beijing-based researcher BDA China Ltd. “It hasn’t helped their marketing.”
    
   I am sure the name has been reviewed and evaluated by many Chinese-speaking managers and engineers at Google before the final decision was reached. Being reviewed by Chinese doesn’t guarantee that the best name was chosen, however.
    
   When you have a committee trying to make a decision on a name, the tendency is for the majority to pick a name that is safe and usual. That way, nobody gets fired because of a name. However, typically a name that will become engraved in a person’s mind is a name that is unusual, and may even be disliked. Most people say they want to have a great name, but they lack the guts to be bold for fear that the name may be too extreme. Instead, most people opt to follow the crowd with what is safe and, therefore, merely good, but not the best name.
    
6. The company will begin “some experimentation” for advertising in the next 30 days, Lee said. “In China, we need to do more. If people don’t know Google is a search engine, or if they can’t spell Google, they don’t know you are better.”
    
   Some experimentation for advertising will surely cost more than if they had just adopt a better name such as Guge, Brother Gu, as suggested in my 2006 blog entry Danger: Google’s Lost in Translation … Try it. It’s better than singing a sad song in the valley. People can easily make “Wen Gu Ge” (ask Google) and “Zhao Gu Ge” (search Google) part of their daily language. You can’t ask a Song anything.

The Article:

• China Can’t Spell G-O-O-G-L-E as Search Engine Falters as Verb

The transliterated name for Google is 谷歌 (gu ge).  

• 谷 (gu) is a valley or gorge.
• 歌 (ge) is a song or to sing.

Gu can refer to the Silicon Valley, while Ge can refer to singing. With Google’s success, we can assume they are singing a joyful song in the Silicon Valley.

What do you think?

Related:

• Danger: Google’s Lost in Translation …
• Has Been Found by Baidu

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Google News  

• 雀 (que) is a sparrow.
• 巢 (chao) is a nest.
• 咖啡 (ka fei) is coffee.

This translated name literally means “Sparrow’s nest coffee,” a name that makes more sense once you realize its parent company is Nestle, a German dialect surname meaning small nest. With a “nest” being a home in which nurturing is provided, these are welcome associations for this brand.

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Nescafe News  

百事 (bai shi), meaning hundreds of things or everything, is the Chinese transliterated name for Pepsi.

• 百 (bai) is a hundred or numerous.
• 事 (shi) matter, circumstance, event, or occurrence.

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Pepsi News  

The transliterated Chinese name for Merrill Lynch is 美林 (mei lin).

• 美 (mei) is beauty, beautiful, or pretty.
• 林 (lin) is a forest.

Mei Lin, literally means a beautiful forest—a good metaphorical association. Wouldn’t you want your financial portfolio to grow strong and robust like a beautiful forest?

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Merrill Lynch News  

三星, pronounced sam sung in Korean and san xing in Chinese, literally means three stars or “tristar”.

• 三 (san) is three.
• 星 (xing) is a star.

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Samsung News   

本田 is pronounced hon da in Japanese and ben tian in Chinese. 

• 本 (ben) is the origin, the source, or one’s own.
• 田 (tian) is farmland or field.

Similar to Toyota, this company’s name is inspired by its founder Soichiro Honda.

Because Honda is a Japanese surname associated with good meanings, a Chinese person may link this name with “Japanese quality”.

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Honda News   

• 思 (si) is to think, to consider, or can refer to a thought.
• 科 (ke) is science.

思科 (si ke), literally means thinking about science. This is an appropriate, unique, and matching transliteration for a high tech company like Cisco.

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Cisco News 

The Chinese transliterated name for Louis Vuitton is 路易 威登 (lu yi wei deng).

• 路 (lu) is a path or a route.
• 易 (yi) means easy, friendly, or to change.
• 威 (wei) is might, force, or power.
• 登 (deng) is to mount, to ascend, or to climb.

Perhaps because of our learned history regarding King Louis X VI, 路易 (lu yi), as Louis is translated, has associations with royalty or of relating to a king. 威登 (wei deng) implies being powerful and hints at stepping up to the upper class. This luxurious sounding name is precisely the image associated with Louis Vuitton.

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition LV News 

• 吉 (ji) means auspicious, lucky, or something favorable.
• 列 (lie) means to line up, to arrange, or to make into a list.

The Chinese transliteration for Gillette is 吉列 (ji lie, pronounced gee-lee-eh). In Taiwan, Gillette used to be known as 吉利 (ji li), an existing Chinese term meaning auspicious. Either way, Gillette’s name captures the lining up of luck and favor.

Link: WSJ Chinese Edition Gillette News