There is a lot of discussion and buying and selling by Western domain owners that center around Chinese themes, 4L.com without aeiouv, 4 to 6 number.com, etc. Some of the others center around the JS88888 or HG999 type stuff, and I have been seeing some sales related to LLNN.com which I have spent some time on over the last two weeks.
I have compiled some information from sources that will hopefully help you understand certain trends and culture. I will say some of the sources I found do contradict a bit but at least you have the full playbook to read and take from it what you need, and it can help you to delve deeper.
Patrick Zein at Zein.se has a site that deals with Mandarin Phonetics. This site is helpful in understanding pinyin combinations, so you can see the more popular combinations and understand what makes sense and what does not.
Next up is ChinaSmack.com and this site actually goes into Internet acronyms and slang. You may have a combination that you think is a good Chinese combo and may see that it also means something a bit dirty or disrespectful. If you are getting traffic to a domain name, this might help you to understand why people are coming there.
An example:
250
noun/adjective.
A foolish person who is lacking in sense but still stubborn, rude, and impetuous.
Bookmark the site to refer back to when you need info.
Someone in Hong Kong told me to check out the provincial codes as possibly one part of the process around the names we see sell like hg899.com or pj836.com, etc. Someone else explained that when you look at 4L.com the Chinese break them up into sets of 2 for an acronym, so with BJXL.com the BJ is focused on Beijing and the XL could be a company name or acronym.
You want to check each one out if you are going to be buying names based on each region; for example, XZ sounds like a good Chinese combo: it represents Tibet in the codes so there might not be a ton of business activity. However, I don't know for sure because I am not a native, but I would think that a more spiritual area, focused on monks and maybe hiking. Again, giving you the info to delve deeper.
MessageNote.com put together an interesting article on numbers. I was looking to delve deeper than just 0 through 9 but get into 2,3 and 4 number combos, because a person new to all this thinks, "oh 4 is bad and 8 is great." But 5 in front of 4 is actually good and 5 in front of 8 is not so good. Then it also depends which area of China you are talking about; I have found mixed messages on the number 7. I find many domainers just say "CHINA." Well it is a very big place with not a universal meaning for just about anything across the whole population.
From the article:
Best numbers to combine with number 7 are 2 and 8.
72 and 78 sound the same as “certainly easy” and “prosperous for sure” respectively in Cantonese.
BUT try to avoid putting a 7 before unlucky numbers like 4:
74. They sound like “dead for sure.”
Good Combinations
The numbers that start with 1,2,3,6 and 8 or a combination will always sound lucky.
8, 18, 28, 38, 48, 54, 68, 80, 84, 88, 99, 168, & 108 are all good numbers.
You can choose which you like, but try to have the number balanced with yin and yang energies.
For example: 3388, 1618, and 1328 are all very auspicious, because they have a combination of two yang numbers and two yin numbers.
Such combinations are balanced and very lucky to have them in your life.
One thing of note the author did not look to be Chinese. Now, that is not saying they can't be spot on in their information; I just wanted to note that as someone who is not native Chinese may have a different take on some things.
YellowBridge.com is another excellent source for Pinyin rules and there is a ton of info to help with combinations.
Pinyin Rules: Initials, Finals, and Tones
A Mandarin syllable consists of three components: an initial, a final, and a tone.
Pinyin uses the same letters as the English alphabet except for the letter
TravelChinaGuide.com does an excellent breakdown of each number 1 through 9 and paying attention to what numbers sound like they are important. For example, I had someone email me an opinion on a name that was a mix of numbers and letters: it had 888 so he thought it was great but the two letters formed a very negative word so it would be worthless.
In China, it is customary to regard even numbers as being more auspicious than odd numbers. So, gifts are given in even numbers for the celebration of all occasions. Number 8 has long been regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture. With the pronunciation of 'Ba' in Chinese, the number 8 sounds similar to the word 'Fa', which means to make a fortune. It contains meanings of prosperity, success, and high social status too, so all business men favor it very much. Moreover, in some areas of China, people prefer to pay much more money for a telephone number with 8 in it. They also favor residences on the eighth floor of buildings. In 1990s, a vehicle identification number with 8 was once auctioned off for 5 million Hong Kong dollars.
An academic study is found here courtesy of LanguageAtInternet.org
This article examines the use of Pinyin acronyms on the Chinese Internet, with a focus on their use as a strategy for producing taboo language in online interaction. The popularization of the Internet and the high penetration of Internet use among young users in Mainland China have given rise to numerous new sociolinguistic phenomena regarding the official language of the country, Mandarin Chinese, among them Pinyin acronyms, which are the combination of initials of Romanized Chinese words. According to the results of a questionnaire administered in this study, young Chinese Internet users mainly attribute the invention and conventionalization of Pinyin acronyms to overcoming the limitations of Pinyin input to enhance efficiency, softening the effect of taboo language, and defying the keyword-filtering mechanism of Chinese Internet censorship during online interaction.
NewRepublic.com published an article with some insight to numbers back in 2014.
In the U.S., you really only have to remember two long numbers, ever: Your phone number and your Social Security number. In China, you’re constantly barraged by digits: QQ numbers (QQ is China’s most popular chat service), email addresses, and even URLs. For example, the massive online retailer Jingdong Mall is at jd.com or, if that takes too long to type, 3.cn. Check out 4399.com to see one of China’s first and largest online gaming websites. Buy and sell used cars at 92.com. Want to purchase train tickets? It’s as easy as 12306.cn.
Takeaways:
1) I am not a native Chinese speaker, and this info is just to help those who know nothing about Chinese naming schemes to have some info to go on.
2) Don't register domain names where you are completely lost. I see people doing it with the Hg888, XPJ111.com naming conventions.
3) Use whois history if something drops that you think is a value. I would say if a Chinese registrant that owns many domains owned it that would be a cautionary flag as that may mean, not guarantee, that the name is not valuable.
4) The letter
5) When you get to 6N.com, patterns matter: those starting or ending with triple numbers are some often best. Of course, if you can get 4 or 5 of the same number in a row that would be great. Triples in the middle are not as desirable. Names like 4399.com have value, liquid value, and 439986.com is reg fee for a reason.
I have compiled some information from sources that will hopefully help you understand certain trends and culture. I will say some of the sources I found do contradict a bit but at least you have the full playbook to read and take from it what you need, and it can help you to delve deeper.
Patrick Zein at Zein.se has a site that deals with Mandarin Phonetics. This site is helpful in understanding pinyin combinations, so you can see the more popular combinations and understand what makes sense and what does not.
Next up is ChinaSmack.com and this site actually goes into Internet acronyms and slang. You may have a combination that you think is a good Chinese combo and may see that it also means something a bit dirty or disrespectful. If you are getting traffic to a domain name, this might help you to understand why people are coming there.
An example:
250
noun/adjective.
A foolish person who is lacking in sense but still stubborn, rude, and impetuous.
Bookmark the site to refer back to when you need info.
Someone in Hong Kong told me to check out the provincial codes as possibly one part of the process around the names we see sell like hg899.com or pj836.com, etc. Someone else explained that when you look at 4L.com the Chinese break them up into sets of 2 for an acronym, so with BJXL.com the BJ is focused on Beijing and the XL could be a company name or acronym.
BJ Beijing Municipality TJ Tianjin Municipality HE Hebei Province SX Shanxi Province NM Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region LN Liaoning Province JL Jilin Province HL Heilongjiang Province SH Shanghai Municipality JS Jiangsu Province ZJ Zhejiang Province AH Anhui Province FJ Fujian Province JX Jiangxi Province SD Shandong Province HA Henan Province HB Hubei Province HN Hunan Province GD Guangdong Province GX Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region HI Hainan Province CQ Chongqing Municipality SC Sichuan Province GZ Guizhou Province YN Yunnan Province XZ Tibet Autonomous Region SN Shaanxi Province GS Gansu Province QH Qinghai Province NX Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region XJ Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region HK Hong Kong Special Administrative Region MC Macau Special Administrative Region TW Taiwan Province *
You want to check each one out if you are going to be buying names based on each region; for example, XZ sounds like a good Chinese combo: it represents Tibet in the codes so there might not be a ton of business activity. However, I don't know for sure because I am not a native, but I would think that a more spiritual area, focused on monks and maybe hiking. Again, giving you the info to delve deeper.
MessageNote.com put together an interesting article on numbers. I was looking to delve deeper than just 0 through 9 but get into 2,3 and 4 number combos, because a person new to all this thinks, "oh 4 is bad and 8 is great." But 5 in front of 4 is actually good and 5 in front of 8 is not so good. Then it also depends which area of China you are talking about; I have found mixed messages on the number 7. I find many domainers just say "CHINA." Well it is a very big place with not a universal meaning for just about anything across the whole population.
From the article:
Best numbers to combine with number 7 are 2 and 8.
72 and 78 sound the same as “certainly easy” and “prosperous for sure” respectively in Cantonese.
BUT try to avoid putting a 7 before unlucky numbers like 4:
74. They sound like “dead for sure.”
Good Combinations
The numbers that start with 1,2,3,6 and 8 or a combination will always sound lucky.
8, 18, 28, 38, 48, 54, 68, 80, 84, 88, 99, 168, & 108 are all good numbers.
You can choose which you like, but try to have the number balanced with yin and yang energies.
For example: 3388, 1618, and 1328 are all very auspicious, because they have a combination of two yang numbers and two yin numbers.
Such combinations are balanced and very lucky to have them in your life.
One thing of note the author did not look to be Chinese. Now, that is not saying they can't be spot on in their information; I just wanted to note that as someone who is not native Chinese may have a different take on some things.
YellowBridge.com is another excellent source for Pinyin rules and there is a ton of info to help with combinations.
Pinyin Rules: Initials, Finals, and Tones
A Mandarin syllable consists of three components: an initial, a final, and a tone.
Pinyin uses the same letters as the English alphabet except for the letter
v plus the addition of ū. All of the consonants represent basically the same sound that they have in English with the following exceptions:- The letters
b,d, andgare really the unaspirated versions ofp,t, andk. This simply means that they are pronounced in the way the lettersp,t, andkare pronounced after the letters(as in spy, sty, and sky). The difference is subtle enough that, unfortunately, many Chinese phrasebooks do not bother to point out this crucial difference. - The letters
q,x,z, andcare pronounced more like the lettersch,sh,ds, andtsin cheap, she, suds, and cats, respectively. - The letters
zh,ch,sh,rare known as the retroflex initials, meaning that they should be pronounced with the tongue curled backwards.
TravelChinaGuide.com does an excellent breakdown of each number 1 through 9 and paying attention to what numbers sound like they are important. For example, I had someone email me an opinion on a name that was a mix of numbers and letters: it had 888 so he thought it was great but the two letters formed a very negative word so it would be worthless.
In China, it is customary to regard even numbers as being more auspicious than odd numbers. So, gifts are given in even numbers for the celebration of all occasions. Number 8 has long been regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture. With the pronunciation of 'Ba' in Chinese, the number 8 sounds similar to the word 'Fa', which means to make a fortune. It contains meanings of prosperity, success, and high social status too, so all business men favor it very much. Moreover, in some areas of China, people prefer to pay much more money for a telephone number with 8 in it. They also favor residences on the eighth floor of buildings. In 1990s, a vehicle identification number with 8 was once auctioned off for 5 million Hong Kong dollars.
An academic study is found here courtesy of LanguageAtInternet.org
This article examines the use of Pinyin acronyms on the Chinese Internet, with a focus on their use as a strategy for producing taboo language in online interaction. The popularization of the Internet and the high penetration of Internet use among young users in Mainland China have given rise to numerous new sociolinguistic phenomena regarding the official language of the country, Mandarin Chinese, among them Pinyin acronyms, which are the combination of initials of Romanized Chinese words. According to the results of a questionnaire administered in this study, young Chinese Internet users mainly attribute the invention and conventionalization of Pinyin acronyms to overcoming the limitations of Pinyin input to enhance efficiency, softening the effect of taboo language, and defying the keyword-filtering mechanism of Chinese Internet censorship during online interaction.
NewRepublic.com published an article with some insight to numbers back in 2014.
In the U.S., you really only have to remember two long numbers, ever: Your phone number and your Social Security number. In China, you’re constantly barraged by digits: QQ numbers (QQ is China’s most popular chat service), email addresses, and even URLs. For example, the massive online retailer Jingdong Mall is at jd.com or, if that takes too long to type, 3.cn. Check out 4399.com to see one of China’s first and largest online gaming websites. Buy and sell used cars at 92.com. Want to purchase train tickets? It’s as easy as 12306.cn.
Takeaways:
1) I am not a native Chinese speaker, and this info is just to help those who know nothing about Chinese naming schemes to have some info to go on.
2) Don't register domain names where you are completely lost. I see people doing it with the Hg888, XPJ111.com naming conventions.
3) Use whois history if something drops that you think is a value. I would say if a Chinese registrant that owns many domains owned it that would be a cautionary flag as that may mean, not guarantee, that the name is not valuable.
4) The letter
V is completely meaningless when it comes to Pinyin as it does not exist.5) When you get to 6N.com, patterns matter: those starting or ending with triple numbers are some often best. Of course, if you can get 4 or 5 of the same number in a row that would be great. Triples in the middle are not as desirable. Names like 4399.com have value, liquid value, and 439986.com is reg fee for a reason.
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