Bing,..., is active on 320,000 unique devices monthly, according to third-party research firm iResearch. That’s dwarfed by Baidu’s 466 million and Sogou’s 43 million.
Wow, bing is even less popular there than it is here relative to google.
False, for reasons others have already pointed out.
Why do people believe this myth? Microsoft has plenty of Chinese employees and Qi Lu was the executive VP of Bing for quite a few years. If there was an issue with the name, it would have been addressed by their marketing department long ago.
It also means other things like "ice", but "sick" is the first thing that comes to mind, and in China this is especially a big deal due to superstitions. Naming things is very important here.
amusing anecdote: I remember a discussion about someone who wanted to name his shop 森林木 (three trees symbol, two trees symbol, one tree symbol) and everyone told him it was a bad idea and it would fail because the trees where getting fewer and fewer and that this name was an omen of bankruptcy, and if anything he should put it in the opposite order. (He ended up choosing a different name entirely)
Bing is a really bad name, even tho this had probably nothing to do with it's relative failure
No, "bing" by itself does not mean sick. The sound "bing" maps to at least 59 possible characters across the 4 tones[0] of Mandarin. Only one particular character that maps to "bing4" means sick and it's one out of at least 21 possibilities[1], though I'll grant that it's the one that people are most likely to think of first.
Moreover, as it's normally pronounced by westerners, Bing would most likely map to "bing1" anyway.
Written as 'bing' is may mean many, many things. I doubt any Chinese will say 'bing' means 'sick' not least because a syllable means nothing to them without a tone.
It's very likely the first thing they'll think of, I never said it's the only thing. We're talking about a country here where many elevators don't have a 4th floor because 4 is the same syllable (with a different tone), as death. Same goes for Japan btw.
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Wow, bing is even less popular there than it is here relative to google.
I mean Bing also means sick in Chinese, so it's not a good choice of name.
False, for reasons others have already pointed out.
Why do people believe this myth? Microsoft has plenty of Chinese employees and Qi Lu was the executive VP of Bing for quite a few years. If there was an issue with the name, it would have been addressed by their marketing department long ago.
It's not a myth, "bing" does means "sick".
It also means other things like "ice", but "sick" is the first thing that comes to mind, and in China this is especially a big deal due to superstitions. Naming things is very important here.
amusing anecdote: I remember a discussion about someone who wanted to name his shop 森林木 (three trees symbol, two trees symbol, one tree symbol) and everyone told him it was a bad idea and it would fail because the trees where getting fewer and fewer and that this name was an omen of bankruptcy, and if anything he should put it in the opposite order. (He ended up choosing a different name entirely)
Bing is a really bad name, even tho this had probably nothing to do with it's relative failure
No, "bing" by itself does not mean sick. The sound "bing" maps to at least 59 possible characters across the 4 tones[0] of Mandarin. Only one particular character that maps to "bing4" means sick and it's one out of at least 21 possibilities[1], though I'll grant that it's the one that people are most likely to think of first.
Moreover, as it's normally pronounced by westerners, Bing would most likely map to "bing1" anyway.
[0] https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=chardict&cdqman...
[1] https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=chardict&cdqman...
Sounds more like bing4 to my ear, but see for yourself:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Zh-bing1... (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bing1#Mandarin)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Zh-b%C3%... (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/b%C3%ACng#Mandarin)
Written as 'bing' is may mean many, many things. I doubt any Chinese will say 'bing' means 'sick' not least because a syllable means nothing to them without a tone.
It's very likely the first thing they'll think of, I never said it's the only thing. We're talking about a country here where many elevators don't have a 4th floor because 4 is the same syllable (with a different tone), as death. Same goes for Japan btw.
The Chinese name is "必应”，which means "will reply"