smart and stupid Chinese brand names

[Outofin]

Can you tell me what brand names sound smart or stupid to native English speakers? I feel there're a lot of stupid translations.

Here is a recent news

全聚德 Quanjude Peking Roast Duck-Since 1864

吴裕泰 Wuyutai Tea Shop-Since 1887

同仁堂 Tongrentang Chinese Medicine-Since 1669

瑞蚨祥 Ruifuxiang Silk-Since 1862

荣宝斋 Rongbaozhai Art Gallery-Since 1672

王致和 Wangzhihe Gourmet Food- Since 1669

They are not particularly bad because they simply use pinyin. But very hard to recognize them in English.

[muyongshi]

Well do you think there is a better translation? Then give it! But I think these brands did good in the fact that they realized an ACTUAL and GOOD translations would be 1) hard and 2) COSTLY that they went with the best route which is using pinyin. A lot better than some brands that get horrible sounding english names and don't sound anything like the product and sometimes it sounds so funny that I don't want to buy it because of that.

[imron]

I have no problem with this sort of name, and I usually prefer it to when a company translates the Chinese meaning of its name e.g. things like 金嗓子喉片 - Golden Throat Lozenges - which sounds silly. Another example is when a company just chooses some random English to form a word, for example, recently the digital electronics manufacturer 纽曼 changed its English name from the perfectly reasonable Newman to Newsmy

[cdn_in_bj]

The clothing store "sCat" always cracks me up when I see one.

[gougou]

I (non-native speaker) think those are great names. There is no reason to translate their Chinese names, just as nobody would think of referring to 温家宝 as Mr. Warm Familytreasure

What I found more worrisome is that the same year they started producing gourmet food, they needed to open a medicine franchise.

[imron]

There's a clothing store in one of the malls near where I work that is called Wanko

[Outofin]

Sorry, the examples in my first post are not too bad. I didn't mean to refer them as "stupid". But I mean, there're a lot out there. Take auto industry as example, what do you feel about these:

Chery, Geely, Gonow, Hafei, Lifan, Brilliance, Roewe.

I'm nore sure what a native speaker would feel about them. Do the brands sound all right? According to my English level, I feel Chery, Brilliance and Roewe may be just okay, and the rest are, pretty bad. This would be a serious problem for global marketing.

Oh another example, what do you think of "Gome" appliance store?

[skylee]

I think GoTone is a very good name for 全球通.

TenRen, the tea brand 天仁茗茶, is also good (easy to remember/recognise).

"Gome" is not bad but usually it takes a second for me to switch from pronouncing it "gome" to "go me".

But I am not a native english speaker.

[muyongshi]

I think some of the best two that I have found are both appliance makers Sunning and Haer. Sunning makes me think Japanese and Haier makes me think German. And I'm not the only one that thinks that. I know what you are saying about bad translations and ones that do good are thinking about global marketing. But the problem is is that gome is a retailer not a manufacture meaning I really don't think they are looking global. But then again I first thought carrefare (家乐福) was a bad Chinese name,not a french company.

[gougou]

But the problem is is that gome is a retailer not a manufacture meaning I really don't think they are looking global.

So is Suning. But Gome is listed in Hong Kong, so they better take some time to think about their English name.

But then again I first thought carrefare (家乐福) was a bad Chinese name,not a french company.

If you've seen carrefare on any of their shops, then that was a bad Chinese name. It should read Carrefour.

[muyongshi]

Thanks I couldn't remember for the life of me how they spelled it. Either way though at first I thought it was weird...

Are you sure suning doesn't make their own products???

[roddy]

苏宁 is an electronics / appliance retailer, they don't make their own stuff as far as I'm aware. There could well be a similarly named brand out there somewhere though.

I don't think the English brand is important for Chinese firms until they're trying to attract overseas customers and clients. I don't think it's so important for investors - they'll look past the name.

[heifeng]

Another example is when a company just chooses some random English to form a word, for example, recently the digital electronics manufacturer 纽曼 changed its English name from the perfectly reasonable Newman to Newsmy

Haha, yeah, I thought the same thing..

My favorite is this one, a golf company called Gicoo and the name really confuses me on how to pronounce it (soft G, hard C, or a combination of the two, is it ow or oo for the oo's...I have no clue..), yet they write on their material:

" GICOO是我们自己创造的单词，本身没有特殊含义，但发音简洁有力，琅琅上口。" THe first part...well yeah, that was clear, but that 琅琅上口 is up for debate.

Gome is 'ok' but I always think I see "gnome" when I glance at it, but then again long ago in London when I saw "to let" signs out of the corner of my eye I would have to do a double take cuz I thought it read "toilet" hahhaha. It's interesting how the brain works especially when you are not use to how things are phrased or spelled, especially so when words are made up and sometimes really strange.

All in all, I don't mind names in Pinyin, as long as there are spaces in there once in a while. Endless, unspaced strings of letters in names give me a headache! (as do the lack of spaces after commas and periods!)

[liuzhou]

I didn't mean to refer them as "stupid".

Three times.

[magores]

I'm going to go along with the general consensus.

The examples you give aren't bad.

Worse examples would be:

-English that is unrelated to the Chinese name or the actual business itself

-Literal translations of the Chinese into English (an example of this would be the "Beijing Women's Hospital for all the World", which is near my house. That's a bad name.)

I see nothing wrong with using the Pinyin as the name of a business.

-Sunning Electronics "works" to my ear. Gome is a little tougher, but if you separate the syllables it's a little better. Go Me > Gome

-LaoJia Realty and Weifang Kites sound okay

-Of course, if the name works out to be "Ao Bu Bu Cutlery" or "Mai Dong Soup" then a little creativity might be needed

[Outofin]

I'm relieved hearing that these are not bad names as I thought. I do expect some companies will go abroad in a few years. Often, name is everything. Sometimes I read business news, English people complain bad translations and say they would never consider buying certain things of that name, such as a "gonow" car.

As for 家乐福, it creates a cheerful country flavor (喜气洋洋的乡村气息) to me. I would say they're a very localized brand.

[adrianlondon]

Sometimes cars, even entire brands (Vauxhall, Opel?) had different names in different countries.

They do try to sort this out though.

In the UK, a few years ago, people were happy buying "Oil of Ulay" products but this suddenly changed to "Oil of Olay" for no apparent reason.

In fact, it wasn't because it meant something rude in a small country (that was my guess, unfortunately I was wrong) but just because it sounded "nice".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olay

Then there's marathon and snickers.

etc.

[imron]

Actually of the ones you listed above, I think Gonow is probably the one I would consider a bad brand name. To me it seems just a little too close to Gonorrhea, which is probably not something you want associated with your brand.

[johnd]

Think of some big international companies such as Toyota and Samsung that are using pinyin names (or whatever they call it in Japan and Korea). Brand names are all about reputation and awareness, and nowadays you couldn't imagine them wanting to be called anything else. I reckon I prefer Chinese companies going to the international market with pinyin names, I think it shows a certain amount of confidence in themselves and in China. Huawei, who is now a big competitor of Cisco, is a good example.

[gougou]

This Reuters article adds one that I wasn't aware of - 天津狗不理包子 has been translated as "Go believe".