Linguo-cultural baby name galore

I don't even know if Chinese baby name sites exist, and I am lazy to run a search on it or even bother to turn on my fat butt and ask, but my hunch is that they are not necessary at all. As my experience shows, - and through my hands has passed many a student, - a Chinese name may be anything which sounds auspicious and thus is bound to bring good luck. That brings in my memory the university Linguistics course where we learned that certain peoples were so very impressed with the gadgets of civilization introduced by the while barbarians brave pioneers that they named their newly born "Irons", "Refrigerators" and the like. Christianity limits the number of names which seems just logical to me, but I am biased.

Via a respected blogger Steve Webel whom I do not know personally, but who is a thing in itself (himself?) and thus may be considered a name so popular an extra advertisement will be for him but like a drop in the sea; and via Foxnews I came to know this piece of news. At dawn of the Beijing Olympic Games a new name is gaining popularity among newly born Chinese babies: Olympics (Aoyun). Read the article snatched form the Foxnews below, but in the meantime lemme show off a little. It tickled my linguistic ego to know that "Aoyun" (奥运) is a shortened form of "ao lin pi ke yun dong hui"(奥林匹克运动会) - the whole phrase meaning 'Olympic games'. Good that the vernacular allows for shortening.

Curious thing about it - I know that at a certain time in Russia it was a trendy thing to name girls “Olimpiada”. How many middle-aged ladies are treading the newly fallen snows now - only the statistics-crazy people may know. But it's certainly a tendency.

"BEIJING — The upcoming 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 Sunday.

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, the Beijing Daily reported, citing information from China's national identity card database.

The vast majority of people named Aoyun are male, the newspaper said. Only six live in Beijing. The report didn't say where the others live.

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, the phrase 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 percent 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, Li Yuming, deputy director of the National Language Commission, told the Xinhua News Agency in an August interview.

At least one couple wanted to call their child "1A," he said, while others use the e-mail address symbol (at), which in Chinese is pronounced "Aita," meaning "love him.""