Well, that’s probably not true, but nevertheless it’s the impression I got when I read the list of speakers and participants at the 16th anniversary meeting of the longest running domain forum Domain.cn (域名城) this week. The forum started on August 18, 2000 and many big investors are associated with this forum, such as Domain King Wen Sheng CAI (蔡文胜). Some of the early investors made a lot of money in domain investment and then went on to build great companies.
Just to show you how popular nicknames are in China, here are the examples of some big investors who attended the meeting.
| Nickname | Meaning | Real name | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| 八怪 | eight strange men | 叶旭建 | Xu Jian YE |
| 火牛 | fiery cow | 魏志强 | Zhi Qiang WEI |
| 航叔 | Uncle Hang | 沈晓航 | Xiao Hang SHEN |
| 黎叔 | Uncle Li | 黎俭 | Jian LI |
| 地瓜 | sweet potato | 吴华宇 | Hua Yu WU |
| 莉妹 | younger sister jasmine | 林莉 | Li LIN |
| 66 | sixty six | 张蔚 | Yu ZHANG |
| 帽子王 | king of hats | 景玉生 | Yu Sheng JING |
Did you notice something special about the names in the list? Yes, the majority of the nicknames are 2-pin, confirming what I have been saying that Chinese prefer 2-pin names. Actually, I saw this pattern everywhere when I was growing up in the dragon city.
Since Chinese companies like short domain names, their preference for 2-pin names translates to their love for LL domain names. A good example is ecommerce giant JingDong (京东). Even though it has the perfect matching name JingDong.com, it still spent $3m to upgrade to JD.com. (Currently, JingDong.com redirects to JD.com.)
Now, back to nicknames. If a nickname alone does not help you connect with big Chinese investors, what can we do? LinkedIn may be a good channel, based on my still brief experience on this social network. Both Facebook and Twitter failed in China, but LinkedIn is probably the only social network which is successful both inside and outside China.
Now that Microsoft owns LinkedIn, it may have the potential to become “the” social network for business executives in China. I have already made quite a few connections with domain executives in China, so maybe you can consider this option too. Of course, it’s not a bad idea to give yourself a nickname as well. Just make sure the name projects a nice image about yourself.
