Google may be the most recognized new 21st century brand in the West. But in China, its name was a dog. Surfers had been pronouncing the unfamiliar “Google” as “gougou” or “gugou,” among other variants – meaning “doggy” and “old hound.” An easier-to-pronounce name is just one of the reasons why rival Baidu has been eating Google’s lunch in China. That’s why the company tweaked its iconic name yesterday as it opened a new engineering center in Beijing. Google renamed itself “Gu Ge” (pronounced “goo-guh”), which China Daily elaborately translates as “song of the harvest of grain.” Google (Research) officials said the new name projected “the sense of a fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way.”
What a dim sum of thinking this is. Let them pronounce Google any way they want. Americans find it difficult to properly pronounce high-end names like Audi and Porsche, so each name has an Americanized pronunciation, no biggy.
And the “old dog” as a negative is a glaring red herring. Yahoo means “idiot” in English, Crossfire implies “violent death” and Gap means “missing, broken or incomplete”. The idea that consumers process names literally is false. They process them in the context of the experience and the brand.
And give the Chinese some credit, they know that Google is not a Chinese word with Chinese meanings!
Wang Laboratories, one of the iconic pioneers of computing, was founded by Dr. An Wang in Lowell, Massachusetts. Certainly they could have changed their name to accommodate Americans that might be put off by a name like Wang. But there was no need. Everyone understood that Wang was a Chinese last name and was not being used in the sense of Johnson, an American last name. Even though Wang was an American company. The same holds true here.
The notion of splintering a brand name like Google into different names for different countries, based on the sophomoric understanding of naming demonstrated by their explanation, is truly absurd.
There are no new rules of naming.
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Says Blandor the Imponderable: “‘Gu Ge’… which translates as ‘song of the harvest of grain…the sense of a fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way’, is MY SHCTICK!!! This is no lesser a transgression than if Gallagher were to wear Robin’s rainbow suspenders or if Mr. Williams were to smash swollen cucurbitaceae on stage! I demand redress!” |
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Polle // Apr 13, 2006 at 5:10 pm
“And give the Chinese some credit, they know that Google is not a Chinese word with Chinese meanings!” … sure, but Google experienced in Brazil that Orkut’s name’s resemblance with a popular drink can definately have a positive effect. When they do the math, they can imagine “doggy” won’t help Google getting popular :)
Like your blog, keep up the good work!
2 Mo // Apr 19, 2006 at 1:48 pm
The Wang family contributed greatly to the restoration of one of the old movie palaces in Boston, so it was renamed “The Wang Center.” No problem.
But then one of the cell phone companies came up with the idea of providing a service where people could access recorded information without dialing a number. There were a series of radio ads for the service, but the best ended with:
“So remember, it’s pound Wang for the best entertainment in Boston!”
No record of the number of accidents caused by drivers laughing so hard they drove off the road.
3 s ng // Apr 19, 2006 at 1:59 pm
You might be surprised at how important nuances are for Chinese consumers. The Chinese language is based entirely upon subtle word meanings and idioms, so Google is certainly not the first company to struggle with re-naming for Chinese audiences. Just ask Coca Cola.
When Coca-Cola first entered the Chinese market in 1928, they had no official representation of their name in Mandarin. They needed to find four Chinese characters whose pronunciations approximated the sounds “ko-ka-ko-la” without any nonsensical or adverse meaning when strung together as a written phrase.
Coca-Cola had to avoid using many of the 200 symbols available for forming “ko-ka-ko-la” because of their meanings, including all of the characters pronounced “la.” They compromised by opting for the character lê, meaning “joy,” and approximately pronounced as “ler.” The transliteration of the name ‘Coca-Cola’ they finally settled on used the following characters:
ke kou ke le
This representation literally translated as “to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice,” but it acceptably represented the concept of “something palatable from which one receives pleasure.” It was the real thing, with no wax tadpoles or female horses, and Coca-Cola registered it as its Chinese trademark in 1928.
4 Ken // Apr 19, 2006 at 2:06 pm
I completely disagree with your analysis. Having worked on branding issues in China for the past few years, and having grown up in Asia, I find it entirely foolish to engage any foreign market with Western philosophy.
In Chinese society, names are powerful symbols, and people and companies are named for meaning, not sound. You’ll never find a person named smelly hair (Brandon). To disregard what your name means is to disregard what your target audience deems important. Why, the very language itself is based on symbolism. It is this type of attitude (mistaken or otherwise) that corrodes our foreign policy, and promotes the popular image of the ugly American.
Kenneth
5 igor // Apr 19, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Huh. Here is Shanghai Daily’s take on the name:
Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt unveiled the Chinese name yesterday by piecing together a jigsaw puzzle containing the new name.
Although the American took less than five minutes to figure out the characters, Internet users may take longer to warm up to the search engine’s oriental alterego.
“The Chinese characters lack the visual impact that the word Google commands,” May Huang, an administration officer, said.
Others think that the Chinese name redundant as it may create confusion. “It is much easier to remember one name, unless they pick a simpler Chinese name than the current one,” said Emma Xu, a journalist in Shanghai.
But some are not convinced for the need to have a Chinese name.
“There is no a need for a Chinese name because Google is an international brand. They should instead be working on elements to change people’s habits of typing Google instead of Baidu,” said Ace Tan, creative director of a Shanghai-based branding firm, referring to Google’s No. 1 rival Baidu.com.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/04/13/261102/Google_goes_harvesting_and_discovers_Gu_Ge.htm
6 Ken // Apr 20, 2006 at 10:36 am
Granted these local comments, Igor; however, note that even Baidu has two names: BAIDU, and ??. You must allow for people to refer to your brand in their own language, because they do not think in English.
Baidu’s meaning, as posted by them:
5. What does “Baidu” mean?
Baidu’s name was inspired by a poem written during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles. “.hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.” Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal.
Microsoft, by the way, means small and flaccid (Micro) and (Soft). Mercedes Benz, on the other hand, refers to “one moving forward swiftly.” If you want to play the international branding game, you must adjust for foreign meanings/connotations, even slang. When I was a child, Nissan sold a car called the Nissan Bluebird. In Hokkien, the local Chinese dialect, Bluebird means PENIS. Needless to say, no one wanted to be caught driving the car.
This is not to say the ENGLISH or foreign brand does not exist; quite the contrary. You create a local brand, and provide association with the ENGLISH brand, as in the case of COCA-COLA, posted above. Now both brands have “equal but separate” brand value.
7 Liz // Apr 20, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Uhhmm, I’m a native speaker of English and I would never have defined “yahoo” as “idiot”. It’s a complex word, originating from the sounds a cowboy might make at the start of a thrilling (and rewarding) ride as the horse bucked away with him, “Yahoo!” A related term is “Yeeee haaaa!”, which you might say as the rollercoaster starts the downward descent.
So to say someone is a “yahoo” is someone without much sophistication or restraint, but a great deal of enthusiasm, and perhaps a great deal of ability to get things accomplished.
8 igor // Apr 20, 2006 at 2:44 pm
As to the definition of Yahoo, we were reacting to the literalism of a word that is not Google, but a word that means anything from doggy to old dog, when pronounced not as Google, but in the form of the Chiness nickname for Google- seems like a big stretch to be of concern, a big stretch of doubt and fear put into the heart of Google by a branding agency to make more $. They haven’t said an agency was responsible for it, but wait for it. Here is the entirety of Merriam Webster’s entry for “Yahoo”:
1 capitalized : a member of a race of brutes in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels who have the form and all the vices of humans
2 : a boorish, crass, or stupid person
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/yahoo
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