Was just reading the news on Today online and found this article rather interesting.

 

Excerpts from Today Online (5th Nov 2007)

 

NEARLY 3,500 CHINESE CHILDREN NAMED ‘OLYMPICS’
———————————————-
BEIJING – The Beijing Olympics is more than just a point of pride for
China – it’s such an important part of the national consciousness that
nearly 3,500 children have been named for the event, a newspaper reported
yesterday.

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, said the Beijing Daily, citing information from China’s national
identity card database.

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, it translates to
“Beijing welcomes you”.

Chinese have increasingly turned to unique names as a way to express a
child’s individuality.

In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, 87 per cent share the same
129 family names.

That’s why 5,598 people have the same name as basketball player Yao Ming
and 18,462 share a moniker with star hurdler Liu Xiang, according to the
Beijing Daily report.

Parents have turned to unusual combinations of letters, numbers and
symbols when choosing their child’s name, Mr Li Yuming, deputy director of
the National Language Commission, had told the Xinhua news agency. – AP

 

“Ni Ni” sounds crude man. Reminds about one of the youtube videos that I saw a while ago.

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvtWAXoZjTc[/youtube]

 

 

[tags]youtube, random articles, Olympics[/tags]