Chinese couple tried to name baby "@"

[engine]

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.

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.

Chinese couple tried to name baby "@" [uk.reuters.com]

[Habtom]

I don't see any problem, except she won't be able to get email addresses at her name ;)

[edited by: Habtom at 9:25 am (utc) on Aug. 16, 2007]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I think th@t's a great name.

[zCat]

I don't see any problem, except she won't be able to get email addresses at her name ;)

Shouldn't be a problem if they use the wide-character "＠" (present in Chinese / Japanese character sets) as the name part :-)

[vincevincevince]

I've always wondered how countries with different alphabets handle birth registrations from foreigners. For example, if a chinese couple gave birth in Europe where they are legally obliged to register the birth locally, how would the registrar handle the chinese characters? Writing them in pinyin would be forcing them to change the child's name.

And the reverse case?

[zCat]

Anyone with a non-alphabet name who registers with the authorities (at least in the European countries I'm familiar with) in any form has to do this using the appropriate transliteration (Pinyin or whatever).

In the case of a child: its parents would register it with their own country's consulate, where it be registered with its proper (e.g. Chinese) name.