3 ms·
From: https://nypost.com/2021/11/26/who-skips-two-letters-in-alphabet-in-naming-omicron-variant/ https://nypost.com/2021/11/26/who-skips-two-letters-in-alpha...
by gojomo 5y ago
From: https://nypost.com/2021/11/26/who-skips-two-letters-in-alphabet-in-naming-omicron-variant/ https://nypost.com/2021/11/26/who-skips-two-letters-in-alpha...
> But the United Nations public health agency avoided Nu and Xi for two reasons, a spokeswoman told The Post.
>
> “[For] Nu the reasoning was people would get confused thinking it was the new variant, rather than a name,” Dr. Margaret Harris said. “And XI because it’s a common surname and we have agreed [to] naming rules that avoid using place names, people’s names, animal, etc. to avoid stigma.”
The reasoning is sound, but if they'd annnounced the exact roster ahead of time, there'd be less suspicion. But WHO is really, really bad at public health communication!
- hobofan 5y ago> But WHO is really, really bad at public health communication! Who is?
- sneak 5y agoSometimes his wife comes and picks up the check.
- PedroBatista 5y agoI think is DOG.
- PedroBatista 5y agoLet’s see if Karen gets the same treatment.
- discordance 5y agoOr more like it’s common to one particular sensitive leader.
- callmeal 5y agoOr the approx 1,000,000 people with that last name. https://forebears.io/surnames/xi#:~:text=How%20Common%20Is%20The%20Last%20Name%20Xi%3F&text=It%20is%20the%20708th,reside%20in%20Sino%2DEast%20Asia https://forebears.io/surnames/xi#:~:text=How%20Common%20Is%2.... How Common Is The Last Name Xi? It is the 708th most widely held family name at a global level, borne by approximately 1 in 9,415 people.
- discordance 5y agoYeah fair enough, but the other 999999 probably won’t cut WHO funding though
- baybal2 5y agoXi is by no means a common surname in China. Very uncommon.
- Robotbeat 5y agoI had an advisor with the name, and I noticed the name everywhere. It is pretty common.
- baybal2 5y agoYou had a rare advisor
- gojomo 5y agoIt's common worldwide: #708 on this list of the 1000 most-common surnames in the world: https://forebears.io/earth/surnames https://forebears.io/earth/surnames That's higher than 'Serrano', 'Meyer', 'Murphy', 'Parker', 'Çelik', 'Banerjee' - names I picked from the many other options because I know people with all those surnames who I'd not want to curse with a same-named disease variant. Excluding many thousands of common given names, surname, place names, etc makes sense.
- Semaphor 5y agoInteresting site. 4000th forename and 800th surname for me, 400,000th and 90,000th for my wife :D
- callmeal 5y agohttps://forebears.io/surnames/xi#:~:text=How%20Common%20Is%20The%20Last%20Name%20Xi%3F&text=It%20is%20the%20708th,reside%20in%20Sino%2DEast%20Asia https://forebears.io/surnames/xi#:~:text=How%20Common%20Is%2.... How Common Is The Last Name Xi? It is the 708th most widely held family name at a global level, borne by approximately 1 in 9,415 people. Approx 1,000,000 people in the world with that last name. Makes it about a third as common as Smith (of which there are about 2.5-3 million people).
- KarlKemp 5y ago[dead]