In China, a typical white-collar worker in a city might start their day like this: put on a pair of Endure and Overcome; step on the gas of his Precious Horse; and take a sip of The Clouds.
Sounds confusing, right? Well, for the Westerners, it would be Nike, BMW and Evian respectively. While those Chinese brand names directly translated into English do not seem that eye-catching, but in Chinese are very charming to Chinese consumers.
For foreign companies, a good or bad Chinese name has a significant impact on their development in the Chinese market. However, due to the differences in Chinese and foreign ways of thinking and Chinese not having an alphabet, it has always been a big challenge for foreign brands to effectively localise their brand names in order to appeal in China. A good Chinese name can often give customers an intuitive impression and help brands resonate with consumers.
The Good
Ikea: The Chinese pronunciation of “IKEA” (宜yí 家jiā) is similar to “IKEA” in Swedish (/ɪˈkeːˈa/). It also demonstrates the quality of the company’s products, as YiJia literally means “suitable and nice for your home”. The name is also derived from ancient poetry, making it a brand name that blends foreign corporate culture with Chinese traditional culture.
In the FMCG sector, there are many brilliant translations as well. For example, Estee Lauder, an American manufacturer and marketer of prestige skincare, makeup, fragrance and hair care products, is translated into Chinese “Ya shi lan dai” (雅诗兰黛).
The pronunciation of the Chinese name is similar to that of the original English one and both Chinese and English names have 4 syllables, but the literal meanings and associated meanings of the Chinese name are quite different from those of the English name.
“Estee Lauder” is named after one of its founders and has been carefully developed and reinforced as a byword for prestige and quality through the company’s marketing over a number of years. However, when entering the Chinese market, consumers were not familiar with the brand’s heritage.
“Ya shi lan dai” (雅诗兰黛), the Chinese name, is meaningless as a whole and the characters have nothing to do with the literal meaning of “Estee Lauder”, but each character is meaningful and can arouse associations of “elegance, fragrance, fashion and taste”, core values of the brand. The phonetic adaptation of the Chinese name of “Estee Lauder” helps the brand build a consistent global image in the Chinese market and promote the perceived quality of Estee Lauder through a name that is recognisably foreign, but points to the qualities the brand wishes to be associated with.
The Bad
The most recent example of a Chinese name gone wrong is the change of McDonald’s name in China. The company changed the previous Maidanglao (麦当劳) – a transliteration of the company’s English name – in favour of Jingongmen, which literally means “Golden Arches”. Chinese consumers and netizens thought the new name sounded ridiculous and was a pointless change from a very well-known original name.
One highly liked comment online said, “[The new name] sounds like a name of a Peking duck restaurant or a traditional Chinese medicine store”, which is probably not the impression the company was trying to give.
Regarding FMCG, there are many cosmetics brands with confusing Chinese names. One of the more egregious examples is It’s Skin, a Korean cosmetics company. The English name reads clearly as a product designed to care for the skin, but the Chinese name, Yi Si (伊思), is a transliteration of the “It’s” part of It’s Skin with no particularly positive connotations. The brand name loses its original meaning and fails to provoke any positive feelings among consumers.
The Ugly
The worst example of a Chinese name we’ve seen is SNP Cosmetics, another Korean beauty brand. In its English name, the S stands for Science, N for Nature and P for purity. Chinese consumers were already familiar with the brand before they officially launched, with their face masks being bought and sold by “Daigou”, or overseas shoppers. However, the translation in Chinese was Sineipu 斯内普, which sounds and is writen exactly the same as the Chinese name for Harry Potter book character Professor Severus Snape (斯内普), neither a known advocate of the brand’s face masks nor one that the brand would probably seek to be associated with.
ADN’s Chinese naming service works with you to suggest Chinese brand names that reflect your brand values and personality as well as resonating with Chinese consumers. Get in touch if you would like to find out more.