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Brand Naming in China:

Sociolinguistic Implications

Fengru Li, University of Montana

Nader H. Shooshtari, University of Montana

ABSTRACT: Abstract: Applying brand names to international markets

remains a challenge to multinational corporations. Consumers’ sociolinguistic

backgrounds shape their responses to brand names. This paper uses a

sociolinguistic approach as a conceptual framework in understanding brand

naming and translating in the Chinese market. The approach promotes that

sociolinguistics a) recognizes linguistic competence, b) advances symbolic

values imbedded in linguistic forms, and c) renders attached social valence to

cultural scrutiny. Three brand-naming cases in China are presented for discussion,

which may benefit multinational corporations on brand decisions involving

Chinese consumers.

Dr. Fengru Li is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Department of

Management and Marketing at the University of Montana. Her previous corporate

career in international marketing influences her current research on Sino-U.S.

business negotiations and communication competency. Email: fengru.li@business.

umt.edu Web Page: www.business.umt.edu/faculty/fengru

Dr. Nader H. Shooshtari is a Professor of Marketing and International Business, and

Chair of the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Montana.

His research interests include marketing channels and entry strategies of small

and medium enterprises in international business. Email: nader.shooshtari@business.

umt.edu Web Page: www.business.umt.edu/faculty/shooshtari

The authors sincerely appreciate the journal’s anonymous reviewers whose

comments, questions, and suggestions have greatly improved our manuscript.

INTRODUCTION

Reaching the Chinese market

and the 1.3 billion Chinese consumers

is no longer an adventurous dream for

U.S. firms as it was two decades ago.

China’s entry into the World Trade

Organization (WTO) in 2001 will

generate domestic and foreign

economic consequences leading to

China’s further integration into the

global economy (Levine, 2001).

Chinese businesses are increasing

their position as equal players in the

global economy by actively engaging

in various forms of trade and

investment. Naming brands and

having brand names translated into

culturally acceptable linguistic

symbols becomes an ever-challenging

business as culturally heterogeneous

and linguistically diverse consumers

drive the global marketplace. Take

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for example the introduction of the

P&G brand name to the Chinese

consumers, the initials P&G in the

U.S. market stand for the name of the

Procter and Gamble Company,

founded by William Procter and

James Gamble in Cincinnati in 1837.

When entering China in the late

1980’s, “P&G” was not understood

as the initials of Proctor and Gamble,

but as “Bao-jie” in Chinese, which

stands for “precious cleanness.” Not

only the English pronunciation of “g”

has no equivalent in the Chinese

phonetic system, but also the sound

“p” as in “P&G” can have a vulgar

meaning in Chinese, the same as the

expulsion of intestinal gas. Naming

and translating a brand is more than

assigning a symbol with pleasant

sound, or giving the product a unique

identity distinguishable from others.

A brand name as a sociolinguistic

symbol carries cultural meanings and

sets boundaries on relationship

building.

Multinational companies are

cognizant of brand names being an

integral part of marketing strategy (Li

& Campbell, 1999; Campbell, 1999)

critical in successfully distinguishing

themselves from competitors in the

eyes of consumers. Scant attention,

however, has been given to questions

such as “To what extent are global

marketers motivated to integrate

brand naming practice into the cultural

fabric of consumers in countries other

than their own?” and “What resources

do consumers rely on to make sense

of each other’s brand names which

may sound foreign to their own

sociolinguistic systems?”

Our general inquiry in this paper

is to probe into the broader context

of brand naming in global marketing,

and the origin and the nature of social

valence attached to linguistic forms,

such as brand naming and translating.

Our culture-specific interest is to

understand the sociolinguistic

resources that Chinese marketers and

consumers rely on when constructing

culturally relevant meanings of brand

names.

The significance of using Chinaspecific

cases is three-fold. First, from

an international business perspective,

the increasing size of the Chinese

market and its growing prosperity

make China an important market for

Western products. Second, the

Chinese language system exemplifies

the sociolinguistic features typical of

a high-context culture (Hofstede,

1980, 1997) where message

construction and communication are

predominately imbedded and driven

by social relations. Third, the lessons

learned from attempting to make

brand names appropriate within the

Chinese context could be used to

develop suitable brand naming

strategies for other Asian cultures that,

in many ways, share the

sociolinguistic systems to be

discussed here.

We argue in this paper that rooted

in its ideographical linguistic origin

and its cultural tradition of attaching

social valence to names in general, the

Chinese practice of naming and

translating brands in their domestic

market has been a linguistic

realization of the natives’ expectations

and rules pertaining to proper social

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and cultural behaviors. To support this

argument, we first attend to the

problems raised in sociolinguistics

discipline that is relevant to the inquiry

of this paper - understanding the

Chinese brand naming practice from

the sociolinguistic perspective. We

then present three Chinese cases on

naming brands to support the

relationship between brand names and

proper social and cultural rules in

naming. Later in the discussion, we

try to locate the origins and the nature

of social valence that Chinese

consumers and marketers attach to

brand naming practices in lieu of their

sociolinguistic relevance. In

conclusion, we offer insights to

American and Chinese practitioners

on sociolinguistic implications when

designing and translating brand

names.

SOCIOLINGUISTIC

PERSPECTIVES IN BRAND

NAMING

Sociolinguistics is a broader

placement of language use in contexts,

focusing on the relationship between

language use and society (Downes,

1998). In marketing, brand naming

is by all means an application of

language symbols that have been

shaped by societal factors such as

beliefs, values, constraints, and

prescriptive rules. The term

“sociolinguistics” has been

problematic to researchers, both in its

conceptualization and research scope,

primarily because the discipline

encompasses developments from

fields such as linguistics, sociology,

psychology and anthropology. In the

absence of a comprehensive

definition, we present below three

perspectives of the sociolinguistics

discipline that we gleaned through

relevant literature. The perspectives

will also be used as a conceptual guide

in the remainder of our discussion.

Sociolinguistics Recognizes

Linguistic Competence

A brand name, be it for a

business or for a product, is a

linguistic form. Traditional linguistics

looks at one particular language and

investigates the patterns in which

sounds, phonemes, morphemes,

words, phrases, and sentences

combine to form meaningful

utterances (Sneddon, 1996). Noam

Chomsky (1957, 1965), professor of

linguistics at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology since 1955,

has been an inspiration for sociolinguists

because of his “revolution in

syntax and ethno-scientific

approaches to semantics” (Briggs,

1986: 113). Chomsky (1965)

established the concept of “linguistic

competence” which he defined as the

ability to produce an infinite number

of grammatical sentences from a finite

set of syntactic rules.

The concept of “linguistic

competence” has been broadly

applied in brand naming particularly

in the North American market and

with heavy reliance on phonetic

appeals. For instance, building on the

principles of obstruents and

sonorants, American brand designers

find names such as “Chanel,” “Tide,”

“Nike,” and “Coca Cola,” etc. to bear

distinct features of sound appeal

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(Cohen, 1995) and, therefore,

advocate such phonetic appeal as a

universal feature of successful brand

names.

Sociolinguistics, however, looks

into a linguistic form beyond its

syntax structure by inquiring into “the

role of context in determining the

meanings of signs” (Briggs, 1986:

113). Theoretical advances from

treating linguistic symbols as static

structure to context-dependent

symbols have been attributed to many

renowned social scientists. Among

them are linguistic anthropologist

Keith Basso (1979) who studied the

linguistic play of cultural symbols by

the Western Apaches in revealing the

natives’ conceptions of who are the

white men; Charles Briggs (1986)

who conducted sociolinguistic

appraisals on the “communicative

blunders” inherited in traditional

interviewing practices; Penelope

Brown and Stephen C. Levinson

(1987) who advanced the

sociolinguistic construction of the

universal phenomenon of politeness

in cross-cultural settings; Clifford

Geertz (1973) whose field research on

interpretations of cultures has aspired

a generation of social and

anthropological linguists; and Dell

Hymes (1971a, 1971b) who

pioneered the concept of

“communicative competence” claims

that the ability to communicate entails

more than a knowledge of syntax and

semantics alone. According to Keith

Basso (1979), communicative

competence is an individual’s

knowledge and trained capability to

engage in the “full range of

communicative functions served by

speech act” and “adequate

ethnographic interpretation” of

“speaking in all its forms.” There are

many other sociolinguistic scholars

whose studies, though influential, go

beyond the scope of our inquiry.

Sociolinguistics Advances

Symbolic Values Imbedded in

Linguistic Forms

Linguistic forms are used to

express symbolic values. The

symbolic value is often determined by

the symbol’s functional roles, as well

as by the sociolinguistic resources that

natives rely on as references. For

example, the yellow arch of “M” in

every McDonald’s restaurant is a

brand name with different symbolic

values to patrons of diverse societal

backgrounds. For most Americans, it

is an inexpensive fast food chain. Yet,

in China, it is also a place of social

status, a show of a patron’s socioeconomic

affordability. Symbols are

considered vehicles for cultural

conceptions of social reality because

symbols are “tangible formulations of

notions, abstractions from experience

fixed in perceptible forms, concrete

embodiments of ideas, attitudes,

judgments, longings, or beliefs”

(Geertz 1973: 91).

Brand names as linguistic

symbols bear certain culture-specific

meanings and values. For instance,

because native Chinese consumers

prefer and expect visual images

provoked by linguistic symbols, the

American “Tide” brand was renamed

with two Chinese characters in the

Chinese market as “Tai-tzi,” standing

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for “washing off stains.” Likewise, the

Mercedes Benz Corporation allowed

the brand name “Mercedes Benz” to

be translated into the two-word

Chinese name “Ben Chi,” meaning

“dashing speed” as that of a passing

thunder. The Ford Mustang bears the

two-word Chinese name as “Bao

Ma,” meaning “treasure horse.”

A question one may raise is why

cannot the globally established brand

names such as Benz, or Nike, or

Mustang stay in their original Latin

characters? While we address the

technicality of this issue in detail in

the section on “Implications for

American and Chinese Practitioners,”

we should emphasize the extent to

which Chinese consumers locate

cultural meanings in names. While

all brand names are linguistic

symbols, the “dashing speed” of the

“Ben Chi” Mercedes carries the

Chinese natives’ conceptions of

masculinity while the symbol

“treasure horse” of the Mustang

expresses femininity. It is, therefore,

not surprising that the “dashing speed”

of the Mercedes Benz has been the

dominating brand for men of high

socioeconomic status, and the

“treasure horse” of the Mustang has

been exclusive for women of wealth

in Chinese market today.

One can only begin to imagine

whether female Chinese would drive

the Ford Mustang had its verbatim

translation “wild horse” been used in

brand translation. The Chinese

linguistic symbol for “wild” has

connotations of promiscuity and

masculinity that no Chinese woman

of class wishes to be associated with.

Brand names, therefore, become

conceptual vehicles for Chinese

natives to interpret socially and

culturally appropriate norms and

behaviors and vice versa, the cultural

norms and behaviors also become

relevant in brand naming.

Sociolinguistics Renders Attached

Social Valence to Cultural

Scrutiny

The core social and linguistic

problems confronting contemporary

socio-linguists have been succinctly

summarized by British socio-linguists

Brown and Levinson (1987). They

state:

“In the case of sociolinguistics,

the theory argues for a shift in

emphasis from the current

preoccupation with speakeridentity,

to a focus on dyadic

patterns of verbal interaction as

the expression of social

relationships; and from emphasis

on the usage of linguistic forms,

to an emphasis on the relation

between form and complex

inference” (Brown and

Levinson, 1987: 2).

The problems that Brown and

Levinson have advanced help

illustrate the core inquiry of this paper.

On the one hand, we treat brand

naming in marketing as a social

interaction between marketers and

consumers. As such, brand names

should facilitate the desired

relationships by consumers. On the

other hand, we use the origin (i.e. the

linguistic systems) and the nature of

social valence (i.e. beliefs and values

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shared by natives) shared by Chinese

marketers and consumers in brand

names as a means to scrutinize the

complex cultural inferences. To

illustrate, let us use a trans-cultural

event experienced by one of the

authors. She brought with her from

Beijing, China, 140 pounds of clothes

and 12 pairs of dark-colored shoes to

Missoula, Montana, in 1986. She

wanted to be prepared for any material

shortages and cow-pies in the streets

of Montana cities because “Montana

is a developing state” that “has more

cows than people,” as described by a

Montana professor who was teaching

in Beijing, China, in 1985. In

retrospect, the reason that the Chinese

audience, the author included, failed

to share the intended message of

Montana being “the last paradise” was

the deviated sociolinguistic

backgrounds between the speaker and

the listeners. To that particular

Chinese audience, middle class city

dwellers, Montana being a developing

state with more cows than people

provoked images of poor farmers and

lean cows plowing the bare lands in

the mountain terrains. The Chinese

audience quickly situated the

linguistic symbols of “developing

state,” “mountains,” and “cows” in

their own sociolinguistic backgrounds

in order to make sense of the situation.

The natives’ conception of “a

developing state” was translated into

the status of a developing country, and

was reinforced by the cows

outnumbering people. Furthermore,

throughout Chinese contemporary

and modern history, cows have been

used as primary farming tools in rural

areas. As a matter of fact, the author

worked on the farmland like the great

majority of Chinese farmers who

could not afford to use cows for

farming until the 1990’s when China’s

economic reforms began coming to

fruition. In the Chinese media and

elementary school textbooks, words

such as “developing countries,”

“mountains,” and “cows” are

frequently associated with lands

primitive for local peasants to farm.

Worst of all, public access to

information about the United States

was minimal even in the early 1980’s

due to China’s politically controlled

media.

We have in the above made less

ambivalent the term “sociolinguistics”

both in its nature and functions. We

specified three perspectives afforded

by the sociolinguistics approach in

understanding the Chinese brand

naming practice. We now turn to three

cases we have assembled as

illustrators of and supporting evidence

to our argument presented in the

introduction regarding the

sociolinguistic resources used by

Chinese consumers and marketers to

construct culturally relevant meanings

of brand names. The cases will direct

our attention to the cultural origins and

social resources that have helped

shape the Chinese brand naming

practices.

BRAND NAMING: CHINESE

CASES

Two of the cases are from the

period of China’s economic reform

(1978 to present) and one from the

pre-socialist era, or prior to 1949.

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They provide a context to facilitate the

foregoing discussion on using the

sociolinguistic approach to

understanding brand naming

behaviors. We developed the selected

materials for presentation from

original sources—such as Chinese

local newspapers, investigative

reports, periodicals, trade books,

Chinese marketing textbooks, and

trade journals, oral accounts passed

on from prior generations, and

interviews with local Chinese. We

then synthesized, translated, and

assembled the materials into cases.

Case 1: The “Hong Gao Liang”

(Red Sorghum) Franchise

Starting in 1995, a fast-food

chain, “Hong Gao Liang,” rapidly

expanded in China, targeting the

baby-boom generation that grew up

in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. “Hong gao

liang” literally means “red sorghum,”

an agricultural product that evokes the

experiences of baby boomers who

were sent en masse to the countryside

in their teens and twenties as part of

Mao Zedong’s re-education programs

intended to make city dwellers and

intellectuals learn from the peasant

masses. People who spent much of

their formative years exiled in

agricultural pursuits have certain

nostalgia for the rustic life and a

patriotic pride in the idealism many

felt in those years. That generation is

now among the more affluent in

China, and includes a high proportion

of government managers and

entrepreneurs.

“Hong Gao Liang” was also the

name of an internationally acclaimed

movie of the late 1980s. Produced

by the Chinese director Zhang Yi

Mao, it was one of the first Chineseproduced

movies to garner wide

praise outside China, a point of

patriotic pride to Chinese long

bombarded by Western movies. Thus,

the name Hong Gao Liang evokes

both sentimentality and patriotism for

a large section of the Chinese

population that represents a

significant consumer market.

As reported in the Chinese

newspaper “Marketing Daily”

(October 13, 1998), Hong Gao Liang

restaurants serve largely traditional

Chinese food such as noodles and

steamed buns in a fast-food style,

emphasizing simple, wholesome food

combined with speed and

convenience. Hong Gao Liang, by its

own admission, “tailgates”

McDonalds’ openings in China,

erecting restaurants near those of the

foreign “invader.” Hong Gao Liang

offers a patriotic counterpoint to what

is widely viewed in China as a form

of economic imperialism—the

proliferation of foreign franchises like

McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried

Chicken. Hong Gao Liang

management points to China’s rich

culinary culture and history in making

the case for serving traditional cuisine

and resisting the inroads of foreign

fast food chains (Ye, 1998a).

Hong Gao Liang’s appeal,

however, is very generation-specific.

Generation Y (up through high-school

age) does not identify with the

sentiments of those who came of age

in the Cultural Revolution that lasted

from 1966 to 1978. These younger

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Chinese prefer the glitz of

McDonald’s. Families on outings will

often buy burgers for the youngsters

at McDonalds and then carry the

burgers and French fries across the

street to Hong Gao Liang, where the

parents will order and sit down to eat

(Li, 1999). The generational appeal of

the brand name “Red Sorghum,” so

intimate to the Chinese baby boomers

and so expressive of their patriotic

pride, has met its limit with the

Chinese youngsters who may watch

as much Disney Channel as their

counterparts across the Pacific Ocean.

Case 2: Jin San Yan Ba Chu

Lian, (Three Golden Essentials

Baked Pig Face)

Beijing, the capital of China, is

home to 55 McDonald’s restaurants

and 30 Kentucky Fried Chicken

outlets. However, a recent rising star

in the firmament of Chinese fast food

franchises has captured the

imagination of the Chinese

government-controlled media

(Johnson, 1999). The business name,

as well as its product name is “Jin San

Yan Ba Chu Lian,” or in English, the

“Three Golden Essentials Baked Pig

Face.” The brand has been featured

in more than 50 domestic newspapers

and a half dozen television programs,

all heralding “China’s first patented

dish and a response to Western fast

food chains in China.” The celebrated

60-year-old entrepreneur, Mr. Shen,

sees himself as “the leader of a new

movement in Chinese food: the march

toward ubiquitous fast-food outlets

that can compete with the world’s

giants.” His fanfare product is

trademarked with the logo of a

smiling pig face.

Even in China’s domestic

market, the product, baked pig head,

had been disappearing since the late

1970s and early 1980s, when China’s

economic reforms increased Chinese

living standards. Baked pig’s head

has been a traditional dish in northern

China and, for formerly poor people,

it has nostalgic appeal. One of the

authors still has fond memories of the

1960’s and 70’s when her mother

brought a raw pig head home on the

15th of every other month, her payday.

That night, all the five siblings would

crowd their small kitchen, watching

their father spend an hour cleaning the

pig head with a cleaver. Then they

would be ordered to go to bed while

the pig head was cooked on the coalburning

stove for a few hours. It was

usually the longest night the siblings

had to endure before their bi-monthly

treat of meat, all that the family could

afford.

Baked pig head is no longer so

affordable, costing about $12 U.S. a

baked head, equivalent to 1/7 of the

monthly salary of a middle class

public employee. The brand name,

however, has attracted Chinese

consumers of different generations.

Some have readily re-identified

themselves with this specific product,

dormant for two decades. The brand

of Jin San Yan Ba Chu Lian, baked

pig face, has become so popular that

5,000 baked heads are consumed each

month in just one restaurant and the

owner, Mr. Shen, is ready for

franchise.

Would the brand name, “Jin San

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Yan Ba Chu Lian,” or its English

name “Three Golden Essentials

Baked Pig Face,” translate its glamour

across the cultural divide to America?

Common sense and a basic

understanding of the American culture

would likely indicate that it would not.

Using herbal ingredients to cut fat is

not an American dietary practice, and

Americans do not share the belief that

one gets smarter by consuming animal

heads, particularly their brains.

Case 3: Tianjin Gou Bu Li Bao

Zi, (The Dog Ignores Steamed

Buns)

In the City of Tianjin and

surrounding areas, a popular brand of

steamed dumplings is “Gou Bu Li,”

or “Dog Ignores” According to local

historians and oral accounts passed

along, the brand name “Dog Ignores”

originated from a boy’s nickname.

Some four generations ago, members

of the Chen family found an

abandoned child in a garbage dump

and adopted him. Alluding to his

good fortune in not being eaten by

dogs, they nicknamed him Gou Zi, or

“Doggy.” The child grew up to

become an accomplished self-taught

chef whose steamed dumplings were

unparalleled in the area, and were

made from the best ingredients. His

business prospered and soon he was

kept busy bustling about his shop and

entertaining important new clients.

His old friends and original customers

would have difficulty getting his

attention and began to refer to him as

“Doggy ignores [us].” His business

eventually acquired that appellation

and, still today, attracts long lines of

dumpling aficionados in Tianjin. The

recipe has been passed down through

male descendants. An apprentice from

outside the family struck out on his

own and opened a competing

business. Some consider the

apprentice’s dumplings even tastier

than Gou Bu Li’s, but they cannot use

the Gou Bu Li name. Gou Bu Li

branches were opened in New York,

San Francisco, and Tokyo. That

history is little known in these places,

except among the Chinese émigrés.

CASE DISCUSSION:

SOCIOLINGUISTIC

IMPLICATIONS AND SOCIAL

VALENCE

This paper suggests that the

Chinese brand naming practice is a

linguistic realization of the natives’

expectations and rules for proper

social relations and behaviors; and

that brand naming rules are shaped by

the ideographical linguistic nature of

the Chinese language and its tradition

of attaching social valence to names.

If the brand naming practice in each

of the above cases is indeed the

linguistic realization of the natives’

cultural expectations for appropriate

naming rules, what sociolinguistic

resources have they relied upon to

determine what rules are valuable?

These brand names have

communicated efficiently with the

social and linguistic accuracy required

for the Chinese context but may not

be reciprocated by those who do not

share the same sociolinguistic

background. We address in this

section two key cultural resources that

Chinese have relied upon to make

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brand names meaningful: (a) the

ideographical nature of the Chinese

language system and its influence on

brand naming rules; and (b) the

Chinese tradition of attaching value

to personal names, which has been an

integral part of their brand naming

practices.

Ideography in the Chinese

Language

An ideogram is a written symbol

that represents an object directly rather

than a particular word or speech

sound. Ideograms not only form the

basis of the Chinese language system

but, also, play a vital role in choice of

characters or words for names from

the available 50,000 Chinese

characters. For instance, almost all

Chinese words or characters that are

designated to describe attributes of

animals share a common ideographic

component. In recognizing the

ideographic component denoting

“animal” in Chinese characters, one

can assume with confidence that the

word refers to an animal name, some

animal-related attributes, or products.

An ideogram has the capability

of provoking vivid mental images of

the objects represented by the

linguistic symbol. For example, the

single Chinese character implying

meanings of “peacefulness,

tranquility, or disaster free” is

pronounced “Ann.” The character

consists of two pictographic elements:

a house roof and a woman. Thus the

ideographical nature of the word

“peacefulness” or “disaster free”

carries the cultural meaning that a

house with a woman is in peace. It is,

therefore, not surprising that the

Chinese character “Ann” has been a

frequent choice for business and

personal names in history.

Ideograms automatically group

symbolic meanings of Chinese

characters. They make it possible for

Chinese-speakers to differentiate the

status and degrees of significance

inherent in Chinese characters. The

Chinese equivalent of the brand name

McDonald’s, “Mai-dang-lao,” fulfils

the functions played by ideograms in

incorporating characters associated

with “wheat stalks” and “farming,”

which stand for agricultural products.

The lexical volume of the

Chinese language poses further

challenges to non-native speakers.

Spoken by one-fifth of the world

population and read by Japanese, who

borrowed the Chinese characters to

form their own written language,

Chinese has approximately 50,000

characters. An educated adult should

master at least 3,000 characters,

although about 7,000 are in general

use. Each character is composed of

strokes numbering from one to more

than 10.

In addition, within each character

there are more independent characters.

For instance, the Chinese character for

human face, Lian, has a total of 15

strokes, and eight independent

characters, each with its own meaning.

The eight independent characters that

form the word for face include: a

moon, a human, the numeral “one,”

two mouths, and two persons. To

complicate the challenge, each

Chinese character not only has its own

independent meaning but it

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transforms meanings when paired

with other characters.

To summarize the role played on

us by our linguistic origin, we borrow

from anthropologist Marvin Harris

(1989) because the brand names in

these cases are illustrative of his

statement:

[Human] linguistic competence

makes it possible to formulate

rules for appropriate behaviors

or situations that are remote in

space and time (Harris, 1989:

66).

Social Valence in Chinese

Personal Names

While the ideographical nature

of the Chinese language system has

shaped certain appropriate rules for

brand naming, the Chinese tradition

attaches extraordinary significance to

personal name choices. Looking into

Chinese traditions in giving personal

names augments cultural

understanding of their brand-naming

practices. Schmitt (1995) summarizes

succinctly the following rationale or

criteria for Chinese in choosing given

names for their children:

• A name expresses the essence

of a thing, be it a person,

object, product, or a company.

• A name gives away the namegiver’s

socioeconomic status

and level of education.

• A name reveals the bearer’s

appreciation for fine arts such

as a work of calligraphy

• A name expresses the namegiver’s

moral orientation.

• A name is the name-giver’s

augury for the future of the

child.

As an illustration, let us consider

a woman’s two-character given name,

“Feng-ru.” “Feng” represents a

legendary bird, the phoenix. “Ru”

means “similar.” The name was

bestowed after an incident at the age

of 15 days when she was dying of

pneumonia. Her father, unable to

afford a blood transfusion, offered his

own blood. Her life was saved, hence

“a phoenix rising from the ashes.” The

name, however, has two of the

frequently chosen Chinese characters

for names, which conveys a sense of

commonness. Commonness is often

perceived by Chinese as implying a

working class background for the

name giver, as well as the absence of

intellectual sophistication.

Social Valence Attached to Brand

Names

These brand names also make

the basic notion underlying

sociolinguistics obvious in that

language use symbolically represents

fundamental dimensions of social

behavior and human interaction

(Wolfram, 2003). The foregoing

descriptions of the ideograms

comprising the Chinese language

system and the tradition of finding

cultural values in personal names

applies to the cases discussed in this

paper in several ways. First, the

linguistic features shared among these

brand names can be taken as cultural

rules to follow. They are lengthy

linguistic symbols (or brand names)

and provide commonness in the

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T h e M u l t i n a t i o n a l B u s i n e s s R e v i e w

meanings of the symbols (or brand

names). Each name has five or six

characters. The seem

ingly lengthy names do, however, pass

the four “easy” tests advocated by

American brand designers (easy to

say, easy to spell, easy to read, and

easy to remember). Moreover,

Chinese often use the first three

characters anyway, omitting the rest

for simplicity (Chan and Huang,

1997a). The influence is likely

derived from the way Chinese

personal names (predominately

composed of three characters) are

given.

Second, in brand naming,

simplicity of Chinese characters is

preferred. In the three cases, the

choice of unpretentious and down-toearth

Chinese characters as brand

names obviously takes advantage of

the ideographic nature of the Chinese

language system. They can be read

and written even by Chinese firstgraders.

Third, brand names that benefit

from social and cultural resources

invite intuitive support from the

public. In the case of “the baked pig

face,” the owner relied on the public

faith in herbal diets. The 30 herbal

ingredients used in Mr. Shen’s baked

pig face appeal to this predilection.

The intuition-driven way of thinking

is typical of the Chinese, which may

also have been influenced by its

ideographic language system.

Chinese are more dependent on

knowledge from experience than on

articulated commercials, as compared

with Westerners. Strong sentiments

about imposition by the West and an

on-and-off lukewarm relationship

with the U.S. have also contributed

to the favorable images presented by

brands of “Red Sorghum” and “Three

Golden Essentials Baked Pig Face.”

Both names have successfully

appealed to the moral orientation of

the general public and particularly

Chinese baby boomers. The names

are linguistic expressions and

realization of the name-givers’ moral

beliefs that China can say “No” to

foreign influence domination.

Chinese brand naming practices

support what Martin Harris once

observed in anthropology: “It is

impossible to celebrate one [linguistic

competence] without celebrating the

other [culture]” (1989: 66).

Implications for American and

Chinese Practitioners

The sociolinguistic relevance in

brand naming has been the analytical

focus of this paper. Specifically, we

examined why cultural choices of

brand names are shaped by

sociolinguistic backgrounds of the

people. Likewise, brand names can

also be the consequences of the

existing and changing sociolinguistic

resources available. In the case of the

“Dog Ignores” brand, when the

adopted orphan, Mr. Doggy, made a

fortune on his steamed dumplings in

the 1800’s, he could hardly have

expected New Yorkers to accept his

“Dog Ignores” legacy. Brand naming

is imbedded in the sociolinguistic

backgrounds of the consumers.

Three implications can be drawn

from our discussion. First, the

Chinese market poses challenges to

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T h e M u l t i n a t i o n a l B u s i n e s s R e v i e w

brand names, particularly brands from

the North American and West

European markets that rely on

phonetic appeals. It is quite an

ethnocentric claim by Theodore Levitt

(1983) that the products and methods

of the industrialized world play a

single tune for the entire world, and

that the global corporation can sell the

same things the same way

everywhere. This view discounts the

role played by the sociolinguistic

backgrounds of the consumers, as

discussed in this paper. American

brand names are conceived within the

26-letter Latin system, which enables

English-speaking consumers to make

sense of the names built on the

principles of obstruents and

sonorants. Brand names such as

“Tide,” “Nike,” and “Coca Cola” bear

distinct features of sound appeal. To

many American practitioners, a good

brand name can be judged from its

sound, which differentiates

consonants as “obstruents” (e.g., the

pronunciation of a name such as

‘taketa’) and “sonorant” (e.g., a name

such as ‘naluma’). Cohen (1995)

argues, “Obstruents are perceived as

harder and more masculine, sonorants

as softer and more feminine.”

According to Cohen, this finding is

also supported by laboratory studies

directed by Will Leben, a linguistic

professor from Stanford University,

for the Lexicon Naming Inc.

Parsimony in spelling and simplicity

in pronunciation also contribute to

sound appeals.

While the ideographic nature of

the Chinese linguistic system should

be considered in naming and

translating of brands, as discussed in

this paper, we also recognize the

potential loss of the nuances and

meanings intended by the original

Latin characters. Some legitimate

concerns from foreign marketers

include: (a) the changed meanings in

translation may greatly affect the

position of the brand in consumer’s

mind, and (b) the original image of

the brand may be distorted in the

translation.

We offer two reasons for our

position that brand names in Latin

system be translated into ideographic

Chinese characters to be fully

accepted by Chinese consumers.

First, sense-making is retrospective

from experience. In the history of the

Chinese linguistic system, its

ideograms are interdependent with the

cultural and social valence that the

natives share. The experience of

incorporating Latin words in print as

a means of media publicity is a novel

practice in China, happening only in

the past few years. We have come

across in the Chinese newspapers and

trade journals inserted English words

such as, “townhouse,” “shopping

mall,” “cool,” “party,” “e-mail,” etc.

(The intention and impact of this trend

is beyond the scope of this paper).

However, if a foreign brand wants to

reach extensively to the Chinese

consumers, the translated brand name

is recommended.

The second reason is of

practicality. If the foreign marketer

insists on using its Latin term to

preserve its brand image, the Chinese

local distributors will “invent” terms

at their own discretion, such as the

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T h e M u l t i n a t i o n a l B u s i n e s s R e v i e w

uncontrolled Chinese translations of

the Coke brand described ahead.

When brand name translations are

done according to individual

understanding, the marketing results

could be detrimental. In the case of

the Chinese-language consumers,

translating brands according to the

ideogram which carries cultural

meanings to them is indeed an added

value to brand equity.

It is not our intention to disregard

features of the Latin system in brand

naming. The Chinese linguistic

system does acknowledge the beauty

of sound appeals inherent in its

obstruents and sonorants as in the

Latin. Its language structure, however,

is incapable of accommodating them

in certain situations. For example,

because Chinese consumers expect

visual images provoked by the names,

the American “Tide” brand was made

into two characters, pronounced as

“Tai-tzi,” which stands for “washing

off stains.” In other cases, there are

no equivalent phonetic sounds in the

Chinese linguistic system and,

therefore, no matching characters.

The “ke” portion in the pronunciation

of “Nike” has no equivalent

pronunciation in Chinese. The “Nike”

name in the Chinese market is

pronounced “Ni-Kerr.” The character

for “ni” stands for durability and the

“Kerr” is more for linguistic appeal

than for a literal translation.

The second implication we

suggest is, due to different origins of

the linguistic systems, simple phonetic

transliteration of brand names can fail

with consumers whose sociolinguistic

background is ideographically

oriented and vice versa. For example,

the Coca Cola Company, upon first

entering Chinese-speaking markets

such as Hong Kong and Shanghai in

the 1940’s, suffered for allowing its

name to be translated phonetically

instead of ideographically. The

chosen four-character Chinese name,

“kekoukela,” meant to emulate the

original English sound of Coca Cola,

but literally translated as “pleasant to

mouth and wax” using the ideographic

resources in the Chinese language.

Coca Cola entered China again three

decades later in 1979 with a revised

and unified name which appealed

more to the ideographic sense than to

the original English sound,

“kekoukele,” literally, “Can-Be-Tasty-

Can-Be-Happy.” Wayne Calloway,

Pepsi’s president, was so taken with

the conveyed ideographic sense of

“refreshment” for the Pepsi brand that

he made a sales pitch by admitting

openly to the Chinese that his

company was selling refreshment, a

concept that struck many Chinese as

rather frivolous (Stross, 1990).

The third implication we

conclude is, in the global market, the

Chinese over-reliance on their

ideographic language or phonetic

translation of its ideography in brand

naming has handicapped its

performance. While the ideographic

nature of the “kekoukele” (Coca Cola

in Chinese) brand name makes more

sense to Chinese consumers, a leading

Chinese soft drink company named

“Jianlibao” has failed to convey the

appeal of its ideographic brand name

to the American consumers despite its

extraordinary success at home and in

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T h e M u l t i n a t i o n a l B u s i n e s s R e v i e w

Southeast Asia. The brand name is

pronounced as “Jian-lee-baw” in

Chinese, which is a combination of

three Chinese characters: “Jian”

standing for health and vigor, “li” for

power and strength, and “bao”

indicating “precious treasure.” These

three Chinese characters provoke very

favorable images among those with a

Chinese linguistic background. In the

U.S. market, however, the company

employed the phonetic pinyin (or the

Latin) system by using “Jianlibao” on

the bottle label. The brand was

marketed in the U.S. in 1998 during a

sport sponsorship, which sold only

200,000 cases despite the brand’s

success in more than 20 other

countries (Saywell, 1999). A brand

popular at in it’s home country and

throughout Asia had the door

slammed in its face in Englishspeaking

America.

Although some practitioners

attributed the poor showing to the low

budget for advertising, we question

the verbatim application of the

Chinese brand name to the U.S.

market whose linguistic system is

different from the Chinese

ideographic linguistic origin. The

“Jianlibao” marketers could have

done one of the following to turn the

linguistically non-appealing brand

name into an acceptable brand. They

could have used JLB, the initial letters

from the three Chinese characters of

the brand, to follow the phoneticappeal

orientation in the Latin-System

oriented markets, including the U.S.

market. They also could have played

on the selective knowledge that many

Americans have about the Chinese

language. For instance, the Chinese

character for “Chi” is a recognized

symbol for energy flow (which

happens to coincide with what

“Jianlibao” wishes to convey) among

westerners. It is often used on body

tattoos to indicate “Energy” by

Americans. It also appears on health

drinks and similar products at organic

and health food stores in the United

States. Sense-making in brand names

does not locate in linguistic symbols,

but in the available sociolinguistic

resources that consumers can grasp.

CONCLUSION

The impact of the Chinese

sociolinguistic background on brand

naming and brand name translating

behaviors, as compared to its

American counterpart, is important in

two respects. First, unlike most

American consumers who favor the

sound appeal of brand names, most

Chinese rely on ideographic features

to make sense of brand names. In New

York, however, the Chinese oral

history about the boy named “Dog

Ignores” has been lost to Chinese-

Americans and is unknown to other

Americans. With the loss of the social

context of the name, so is lost the

visual appeal and imagery in the

ideography of the Chinese language.

Second, unlike most Americans

who attach, at best, limited social

valence to personal names, most

Chinese still rely on the cultural

traditions inherited in personal names

to make sense of brand names. In

some instances, Chinese consumers

may still favor names, brand or

personal, that can (1) express

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T h e M u l t i n a t i o n a l B u s i n e s s R e v i e w

socioeconomic status; (2) provoke

memorable visual and mental images;

(3) appeal to the audience’s

sophistication and sentiment; and (4)

indicate moral or value orientations.

The foregoing Chinese cases illustrate

these expectations.

Some challenges are obvious

when using the sociolinguistic

approach as a framework to study

brand-naming behaviors. The most

serious challenge is the scope of

inquiry required by a sociolinguistic

approach. An ideal full-scale

investigation should include elements

identified by sociolinguists such as

Briggs (1986), Downes (1998),

Hymes (1971a, 1971b), Sneddon

(1996) and Wolfram (2003),

suggesting that a sociolinguistic

inquiry, when extended to culturespecific

social environments, should

take into account the social variations

such as one’s socioeconomic

background, linguistic competence or

the ability to choose an appropriate

form of expression, communication

circumstances, the intended effect, the

semantics of language or the cultural

meanings of linguistic symbols, and

the mutual intelligibility of the

message. Another challenge is the

demand of the researcher’s bi-cultural

and bi-lingual competence so that his

or her cultural interpretations and the

accuracy of the interpretations or

translations can be justified.

This study does not attempt to

propose or test a general hypothesis,

but to explore the sociolinguistic

implications of naming and translating

brands across different cultural

settings, particularly Western brands

translated into Chinese. In selecting

brand names for international

markets, the appeal is determined by

the consumer’s sociolinguistic

background. One must be leery of

assuming that what flies well in Peoria

will also fly in Phnom Penh.

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