Chinese Couple Tries To Name Baby ‘@'

BEIJING — A Chinese couple seeking a distinctive and modern name for their child chose the commonly used Internet ‘at' symbol, much to the consternation of Chinese officials. The unidentified couple and the attempted naming were cited yesterday by a Chinese government official as an example of bizarre names creeping into the Chinese language.

According to the vice director of the State Language Commission, Li Yuming, the child's father said, "The whole world uses it to write e-mails, and translated into Chinese, it means ‘love him.'"

The symbol pronounced in English as ‘at' sounds like the Chinese phrase "love him."

Written Chinese does not use an alphabet but is comprised of characters, sometimes making it difficult to develop new words for new or foreign things and ideas.

In their quest for a different name, Mr. Li said the parents of baby ‘@' were not alone. As of last year, only 129 surnames accounted for 87% of all surnames in China, Mr. Li said, suggesting that the uniformity drove people to find more individual given names.

"There was even a ‘Zhao-A,' a ‘King Osrina,' and other extremely individualistic names," Mr. Li said, according to a transcript of the news conference posted on the government's Web site.