Coca-Cola, however, is as popular for its name as for its taste. Chinese believe that signifies a very fine beverage indeed. For foreigners, the same hazards apply. Simple transliterations of Westerners names can give rise to all kinds of misunderstandings, as a survey of cards left at a local chamber of commerce showed. There was the businessman named Byron, who was introducing himself as Imbecile Person, and a certain Toby Brown, whose card identified him as Brown Dandruff.
Some transliterations are safely meaningless.
Bill Clinton s name, for example, is blandly transcribed in the newspapers as bi er ke lin dun, which means nothing at all. Or perhaps that is the point. In many cases, direct transliterations are also inadvertently appropriate. For example, Yeltsin, as in the Russian leader, Boris, is translated phonetically as ye li qing, which means Open Up the Country. The closest transliteration of my own name, li si lai, identifies me as Dead Tired, which is often true, but it is not much of a name.