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The 12th paragraph of the article: "'Nu’ is too easily confounded with `new,’ and `Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name”, the WHO said, adding tha
by pkulak 5y ago
The 12th paragraph of the article:
"'Nu’ is too easily confounded with `new,’ and `Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name”, the WHO said, adding that the agency’s “best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding `causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups’".
- et-al 5y agoXi/席/奚/习 doesn't even fall under the 200 most common surnames in Mainland China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Chinese_surnames#Mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Chinese_surname...
- freemint 5y agoXie is number 23
- jhgb 5y agoXie is not Xi which in turn is not the 'xi' consonant.
- jjk166 5y agoBut it's significantly more common as a last name than any of the other greek letters. 席 is number 213. For context, Armstrong is the 213th most common surname in America. There are still many tens of thousands of people with that surname, it is clearly recognizable as common a surname, and you have definitely heard of at least one Armstrong.
- jhgb 5y ago> But it's significantly more common as a last name than any of the other greek letters. Mu (https://forebears.io/surnames?q=mu https://forebears.io/surnames?q=mu) is more common than Xi (https://forebears.io/surnames?q=xi https://forebears.io/surnames?q=xi).
- sneak 5y agoSounds like the IOC and Apple's stance too. ;) :tw_flag:
- organsnyder 5y agoWhy the "(sic)"? That's the normal spelling for British English.
- HPsquared 5y agoWhat about the pi variant? That could be offensive to bakers.
- option 5y agothey are less important than certain Xi, obviously
- seattle_spring 5y agoSo we don't want to offend folks with "Xi" as their last name, so we instead mock Lrrr, ruler of planet Omicron Persei 8!?
- xg15 5y agoI mean technically, Omicron Persei 8 is a place name, so you're not wrong...
- rob_c 5y agoHow dare we offend the sponsor...
- bsder 5y agoI'm really glad they skipped a "2 character" name irrespective of why they did it. Those would be murder to try to run through search engines. "Omicron" and all manner of misspellings are going to be way easier to search for.
- temp8964 5y agoEven if their conclusion is OK, the reasoning "'Xi' was not used because it is a common last name" is based on a lie. 'Xi' is not a common last name. It happens to be the last name of the largest dictator on this planet, but it does not make it a common last name.
- disgu 5y agoXi is absolutely a common last name. What are you on about? Just checked the white pages for Xi for San Antonio because I used to live there and there's pages upon pages of results. Same for every other bigger US city I've checked.
- temp8964 5y agoHave no idea what you are talking about. Can you show some evidence?
- Loveaway 5y agoCool story! On the topic of Coronavirus, have you heard about the "quarantine camps" in Australia. Pretty crazy stuff isn't it: https://imgur.com/a/3JfgfyF https://imgur.com/a/3JfgfyF edit: Google Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/place/12°29'25.7"S+131°01'30.2"E https://www.google.com/maps/place/12°29'25.7"S+131°01'30.2"E
- dr_dshiv 5y agoWhy didn’t they say “chi”?