3 ms·

"Bing" also means stellar.

• stephencanon 10y ago
  ... and "ice" and ...
  • dilemma 10y ago
    That doesn't negate the negative homonym.
    • yoz-y 10y ago
      It kind of does. As previously stated no Chinese word is pronounced as the English word "bing". Mandarin makes heavy use of tonality and the same roman transcript (or pinyin) can have many meanings. You would really need to dig far to find an accent-less syllabe (for the lack of a better word) and not find any negative connotation. Heck, in Chinese even many numbers can be used as insults.
      • stephencanon 10y ago
        Add to that the fact that the Chinese love to substitute similar sounding words to make puns, and it's completely impossible to come up with a name that doesn't admit some negative reading.
      • dilemma 10y ago
        The 'bing' in cn.bing.com and the logo at the top of the same page isn't read out in English by a Chinese person, but in Chinese, and it has neither tone nor hanzi. "Disease" is a meaning that easily springs to mind when seeing it and it is therefore an unlucky naming choice.