You may or may not be aware that many foreign brands have their own brand names in Chinese. Today let’s have a look at car brands 汽车品牌 (qìchē pǐnpái) in Chinese. 宝马 (bǎo mǎ) — BMW BMW is an acronym for Bayrische Motoren Werke AG, or in English, Bavarian Motor Works. The Chinese name of the company is 宝马 (Bǎomǎ) and it means “precious horse“: 宝 (bǎo) precious + 马 (mǎ) horse. Interestingly, as with many foreigner brands, the Chinese actually give the brand their own nicknames and BMW is one of those. 别摸我 (bié mō wǒ), or “don’t touch me.” is the name locals gave the brand BMW, which seemingly expresses how precious people consider their car. 保时捷 (bǎo shí jié) — Porsche Porsche gained its name from the company’s founder, Ferdinand Porsche, an Austrian-German automotive engineer. The companies Chinese name is essentially a phonetic match. However, the name also suggests speed and timeliness, as 保 (Bǎo) means “to protect/to keep” + 时(shí) means “time” and 捷 (jié) means “quick“. 大众汽车 (dàzhòng qìchē) — Volkswagen Volkswagen is a car company from Germany as you’ll probably be aware. The word Volkswagen means “People’s car” in German. It’s Chinese name 大众汽车 (Dàzhòng qìchē) is a pretty accurate description of the original German name, which means “the people’s car”. However, the reasoning behind this choice goes slightly deeper, see the 2nd character. Looks a bit familiar right? Volkswagen purposely chose this due to the fact it appears to look like a version of their very own logo 众. 奔驰 (bēn chí) — Mercedez Benz Emil Jellinek was an entrepreneur who worked with the Diamler Motors Corporation. Jellinek named the new cars after his daughter Mercedes and trademarked the Mercedes name in 1902. Its Chinese name 奔驰 (bēn chí), which also sounds similar to “Benz”, is made of two characters “奔” and “驰” that both mean to “run fast” in Chinese. 捷豹 (jié bào) — Jaguar The first car to show the big feline was produced under the Swallow Sidecar name, in 1922. The Chinese name of the brand 捷豹 (Jiébào) literally means “quick panther“.
|
| FOLLOW US： |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
