Remember in the mid 1990's when Prince was mad as his record label and changed his name to that unpronounceable symbol? What happened? It really didn't do to much for his career and everyone called him "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" or "The Artist." Meethinks that a Chinese couple has been listening to too many Prince albums lately.
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@", claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.Uh, yeah. I get it. In looking at weird baby names, one doesn't have to look to far. I mean, just look at Hollywood babies. Some of them are definitely scarred for life. I also did a quick Google search of changing names to people like Peyton Manning and Jesus Christ. What is the most unique baby name you've heard of?The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.
"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.
While the "@" simple is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta", or "love him", to Mandarin speakers.