Sounds like this won't be news for you, but for others in the thread, the Chinese sometimes play around a lot with puns and rhymes in transliterated names. Her

Sounds like this won't be news for you, but for others in the thread, the Chinese sometimes play around a lot with puns and rhymes in transliterated names. Here's a terrific twitter thread about Chinese nicknames for NBA players: https://twitter.com/i/moments/993587263283048449?lang=en https://twitter.com/i/moments/993587263283048449?lang=en An example from the thread[1]: Stephon Marbury - 马政委 "Marburyist Political Commissar" This is a pun on "Marxist Political Commissar," since in Chinese both "Marbury" and "Marx" are spelled with the same first character "ma" ("horse"). [1] https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/993571262327910400 https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/993571262327910400