<story><title>16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese people name their babies</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37255033/a-16-year-old-british-girl-earns-48000-helping-chinese-people-name-their-babies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>My wife is Chinese and has told me many of the ridiculous English names people have. We&amp;#x27;ve heard Cinderella before. My favorite that we&amp;#x27;ve encountered was a young woman named Pancake.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just a problem of limited access to information, but also limited knowledge of what qualifies as a good English name. All of the people we&amp;#x27;ve encountered were from Hong Kong, which has no Great Firewall to contend with. We&amp;#x27;ve also seen many people using names that haven&amp;#x27;t been popular in the West in a long time, like Eugene or Doris.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dilemma</author><text>I have friends named Dolphin, Fish and Shadow and they know perfectly well that their names are funny. I&amp;#x27;m certain that Pancake does too. Having an English name is a bit unreal for them just as it would be for you and me getting a Chinese name, so why not get a funny one?&lt;p&gt;Also, naming in another language is difficult. Microsoft knows that, as &amp;quot;Bing&amp;quot; means disease in mandarin.</text></comment>
<story><title>16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese people name their babies</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37255033/a-16-year-old-british-girl-earns-48000-helping-chinese-people-name-their-babies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>My wife is Chinese and has told me many of the ridiculous English names people have. We&amp;#x27;ve heard Cinderella before. My favorite that we&amp;#x27;ve encountered was a young woman named Pancake.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just a problem of limited access to information, but also limited knowledge of what qualifies as a good English name. All of the people we&amp;#x27;ve encountered were from Hong Kong, which has no Great Firewall to contend with. We&amp;#x27;ve also seen many people using names that haven&amp;#x27;t been popular in the West in a long time, like Eugene or Doris.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cafard</author><text>I guess that one could regard that as the counterpart to the odd Hanzi tattoos Americans get without having the slightest idea of whether they are done right.&lt;p&gt;And plenty of Americans choose odd names for their children--out of TV shows, movies, comic strips.</text></comment>