What are some of the peeps thinking here in China when they adopt an English name? Some of the Chinese first names are funny enough if you translate them, with ‘Love the Army’, ‘Little Cow’, and ‘Small Three’ being no rare exceptions.

It gets a lot worse when they choose an English name, either because they are working in a foreign invested company, or because it is ‘fashion’. My previous job was in a big multinational company, and one day I searched the company database for funny English first names. Here is a small selection:

Apple, Bone, Forest (not Gump this time), Stone, Rain, Rainy, Hitler (and he thought it strange that nobody liked him), Seaman, Golf, Echo (yeah, I remember that one, ‘full of empty’ as we say), Sheller, Hiller (spelling error maybe?), Lemon, Volcano, Nono, Spike, Waters, Spice, Spring, Summer, Yoyo, Ocean, and the list goes on.

But what about ‘Wanko’ for a cloths shop in Guangzhou, or the Chinese white wine in a recently opened restaurant in Shanghai which was listed as ‘Little Confused Celestial Being’?