The Beijing Olympics has become so embedded in the national psyche that nearly 3,500 children have been named after the Games by their parents, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Most of the 3,491 people with the name "Aoyun," meaning Olympics, were born around the year 2000, when 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, though 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 Fuwa.
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.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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