By a bizarre accident, I stumbled onto a Singapore professor’s bio and I’m a bit blown away. It has to be a joke — or is it? If it is, it looks like an amazingly elaborate hoax. If it’s not, I have the deepest sympathy for the poor professor who has to go through life with that name. (I’ve heard a lot of Chinese names, and “Shit” isn’t one of them.) Would someone go to all this trouble for a laugh? Very bizarre.
June 8, 2004
The Discussion: 20 Comments
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1
By boo
Oh…now you’ve opened a real Pandora’s box: look what I found cached on Google.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:KZ7zd82oOs8J:jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/dreamteam.html+CHEW+Shit+Fun&hl=en
Personally I think it’s a real name. I don’t know any Chinese, but it may very well be that the final T in the Shit is non-plosive, making the spelling more unfortunate than the pronounciation.
June 8, 2004 @ 10:57 pm | Comment
2
By Simon
No shit. Good find.
Can you imagine the jokes: “I’m not taking any Shit”; “I Shit you not”. Or in your next paper where you refer to Shit all over the place…
June 9, 2004 @ 12:07 am | Comment
3
By Angry Chinese Blogger
Is this their English name, they probably had a foriegn teacher who likes a laught.
I wander what the chinese letter for this is, it could be a litteral translation.
Maybe it’s meant to be manure, or dung, or possible CCTV9 scheduled broadcast.
June 9, 2004 @ 1:09 am | Comment
4
By Conrad
OMG!
June 9, 2004 @ 1:18 am | Comment
5
By The Gweilo Diaries
Poor Thing
Introducing the most unfortunately named person in the world. (Via Richard the Duck)…
June 9, 2004 @ 1:20 am | Comment
6
By Conrad
We all know the truth Richard, you were googling “chewing shit for fun” on the web and . . .
June 9, 2004 @ 1:26 am | Comment
7
By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/PBZ/journal/contents/v76n2.html
Well the Journal of Physiological & Biochemical Zoology does in fact list her article in its table of contents. A lifetime condemned to studying ammonia and mudskippers? Much worse than living with the name.
June 9, 2004 @ 2:35 am | Comment
8
By Lashlar
Ouch. Now, I’ve heard some weird names before, but that, Richard, takes the prize. My deepest sympathies go to the unfortunate professor.
June 9, 2004 @ 4:30 am | Comment
9
By yuck mi gut
it’s fun to chew shit?
Singapore IS strange!
June 9, 2004 @ 6:11 am | Comment
10
By m.c.
bizarre indeed. I wonder what’s her name in Chinese.
June 9, 2004 @ 6:27 am | Comment
11
By Anonymous
I think that IS her name in Chinese!
June 9, 2004 @ 6:38 am | Comment
12
By Zhang Li En
Could it be a variant form or mispelling of Shek which wouldn’t be an uncommon Cantonese name … my guess is that it is the same name in another dialect … Hokkien for example?
I met someone who claimed he new a guy studying at a Scotish university called “Fuk Yu Man” … which is a perfectly possible name …
June 9, 2004 @ 7:10 am | Comment
13
By richard
But it’s not just her name. Look at her list of articles — they are all about the excretions of air-breathing fish like the Chinese snakehead. Every article, even her areas of interest — it’s all about ammonia excretions. It is too strange to be true, but it’s part of the university’s Web site, apparently.
Maybe it’s all legitimate, and somehow just looks like a sick joke.
June 9, 2004 @ 7:52 am | Comment
14
By eswn
Some years ago, when i was reviewing correspondence from Chinese corporations in the course of an investigation, i did in fact come across the remarkable “Shit”. In that case, it was even a last name, as in “How are you, Mister Shit?” Alas, the correspondence was in English only and I do not know what it is in Chinese.
But there is always the reverse side of the story, as the Chinese take revenge on Americans. Of course, they don’t always reveal their secrets.
I’ll just give a simple example: Sharon Stone — when transliterated into Cantonese, the name Stone sounds just like “Shit can”. “How are you, Ms. Shit Can?”
June 9, 2004 @ 9:30 pm | Comment
15
By Simon World
Asia by blog
A slightly shorter version today…but you must at least read the first link – it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. As Homer says, it’s funny coz it’s true. Firstly the names some people take require more thinking (via Richard). Shaky does…
June 9, 2004 @ 9:59 pm | Comment
16
By Simon World
Enemablog
This blog will be enjoying a long weekend and taking a well-deserved Friday off to bask in family love and Hong Kong sunshine. Thus an early version of this beloved post. My audacious Charity Readership Drive is off to a great start. But do not rest on…
June 10, 2004 @ 1:35 am | Comment
17
By mr brown
Chew is a very common surname.
In Cantonese dialect, I suspect Shit is Xue, as in Snow, and Fun is Fen, as in Fragance.
June 10, 2004 @ 10:50 pm | Comment
18
By mrbrown
A rather unfortunate name
The Peking Duck spotted this Singapore professor’s bio and asked if it was real or a hoax. I don’t even want to know what he was searching on Google to get this link. Heheh.
June 10, 2004 @ 10:56 pm | Comment
19
By GVT12
Now that you put it that way, we can all turn our names into “S” and be made a fool of as well;)
But on another note; Here in San Diego, we have a female news anchor (ch. 51 – I believe) lady who has a rathe “cute” name, I get chuckles everytime I hear it on the air.
Her Name?
Sasha Foo!
I can hear the intros at a meeting somewhere she may have been… Hello I am Sasha Foo, and Who are you? 😉
sashafoo@yahoo?
November 28, 2004 @ 1:05 pm | Comment
20
By A Chinese
It’s probably due to the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese characters of her name. Cantonese is a dialect in China, and it tends to have ugly translations of names: For instance, the Charter Bank in HongKong is translated by into “Bank of Beaten Dregs”, and Rogers in Canada is translated into “Dregs of Luos” (Luo is a Chinese family name). Amazingly such bad translates are accepted, only except that standard Chinese speakers ( so called Mandarin, but that’s a wrong name given to standard spoken chinese ) feel weird about these and make jests about them from time to time. Some Cantonese speakers however still intensely defend their dialects, even argue that Cantonese are the oldest Chinese dialects and thus should be kept alive. Personally, for me , the most puzzling thing about this dialect is the oral speaking often do not correspond to written form. But If Cantonese speakers write an article, there’s no difference from standard Chinese (except for the tranditional chinese characters they(Hongkongese and early oversea chinese emigrants )use).
June 2, 2005 @ 9:54 am | Comment