Oh, so annoying!
I was just reading an article from the New York Times called “The Cute Factor.” It mentions a baby panda at the National Zoo. The writer, Natalie Angier goes on to write:
The 6-month-old, 25-pound Tai Shan - whose name is pronounced tie-SHON and means, for no obvious reason, “peaceful mountain” - is the first surviving giant panda cub ever born at the Smithsonian’s zoo.
First off, that’s not how “shan” is pronounced, in Mandarin, anyway, and even worse, what’s with the “for no obvious reason”? Maybe the reason isn’t obvious to her, but any Chinese person (and I’m sure any person working for the National Zoo, who she could have contacted easily) could explain it to her: Tai Shan is one of the three most famous mountains in China. The other two are Huang Shan and Emei Shan. Thousands, if not millions, of people visit Tai Shan every year. Doesn’t it make sense to name an animal after a famous, important, natural feature of its country? Would it be dumb to call a bear Yellowstone? Or does she think it should be called something like Billy or Lincoln because it was born in the United States?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.