What's in a Chinese name? Everything!
Balmoral Castle and Estate has been renamed ‘One True Love Castle’ in Mandarin, following 10 weeks of voting across China.
It follows the results of VisitBritain’s £1.6 million “GREAT Names for GREAT Britain” campaign, which builds on the existing trend of giving relatable Mandarin names to favourite celebrities, places and foods.
Balmoral Castle joined the likes of the haggis, the Glenfinnan Viaduct and the Kelpies in a list of 101 icons and places of interest across the UK, including 23 in Scotland.
Among them is “Cairngorms National Park”, which translates as Yun Yuan Xue Ling, “Snow mountains reaching into sky”.
Reaching nearly 300 potential Chinese tourists via VisitBritain’s influential Weibo and WeChat social media platforms across China, the campaign is the UK tourism organisation’s biggest ever in the country.
Over two million people visited the campaign pages and nearly 30 million Chinese people watched the launch video, with 13,000 new names suggested throughout the ten weeks.
Glen Coe received the third highest number of votes overall - 24,505 - in the whole campaign, whilst The Highland Games was the most popular Scottish point of interest to name, with a total of 235 suggestions.
All 101 points of interest have now been given their three most popular Chinese names. Over the coming days, VisitBritain will be working together with all of these attractions to decide which name to go for and how they might use the results.
Said Joss Croft, marketing director at VisitBritain: “The popular names in the competition all share similar pronunciation. Most of them have a simple few Chinese characters but are rich in meaning - either there is a profound history or connection to relate to, or the name is interesting and really catchy to use.
“We want Britain to be the most attractive and welcoming destination for Chinese travellers in Europe. The naming campaign has given these Scottish locations and landmarks huge exposure across China and created an affinity with potential tourists. We hope the points of interest involved will embrace their new Mandarin name to help them compete for more high-spending tourists from the world’s biggest outbound tourism market.”
Denise Hill, Head of International Marketing at VisitScotland commented: “This campaign has thrown up some truly inspiring and engaging names for Scottish icons, with the Glenfinnan Viaduct described as ‘Highland Rainbow’ and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park becoming ‘Mountain Lakes Get You Drunk on Dreams’ being particular highlights!
“The Great Names campaign has proved a fun and entertaining way for us to engage with Scotland’s Chinese market, which is growing year-on-year. These extraordinary new monikers will only serve to lend even more intrigue and romance to places throughout Scotland which in turn will lead to further increases in visits from China . William Shakespeare once asked: ‘What’s in a name?’ It seems the answer is a great deal!”
