For Foreign Brands Entering China

Your brand's Chinese name
is a business decision

The right name — and the right plan — keeps your brand from losing tens of thousands of dollars when it enters China. A bad homophone, a cultural misfire or a name you can't register means reprinted packaging, blocked trademark filings and rebranding costs that dwarf any naming budget. We screen all of it before you print a single business card.

✦ Homophone risk screening ✦ Five-element industry fit ✦ 81-numerology scoring ✦ Trademark-aware approach

Why names fail in China

Famous brands got this wrong

🗣️

The Coca-Cola lesson

Coca-Cola's first Chinese attempt read as "bite the wax tadpole". The fix — 可口可乐 "delicious & joyful" — is now a textbook case. Sound matters as much as meaning.

⚠️

Goldlion's near-miss

金狮 (Gold Lion) sounded like "lose all gold" in Cantonese. Renamed 金利来 — "gold and profit come" — and sales followed. One character, opposite fortunes.

🌐

The FangFang fiasco

A Chinese cosmetics brand's pinyin "FangFang" means "wolf's fang" in English. Naming must work in both directions — into Chinese and back out.

The standard we hold ourselves to

How the best brands did it right

🚗

Mercedes-Benz → 奔驰

"Benz" became 奔驰 — "galloping at speed". Phonetic match plus an automotive meaning: the gold standard of sound-and-sense naming. Every candidate we score is graded on both axes.

☕

Starbucks → 星巴克

"Star" kept literally (星), "bucks" phonetically adapted (巴克) — a hybrid strategy that preserves brand recognition while reading naturally in Chinese. Our engine offers the same three strategies: sound, meaning, hybrid.

💄

Revlon → 露华浓

Drawn from a Tang-dynasty poem line (云想衣裳花想容，春风拂槛露华浓) — a beauty brand named from classical poetry about beauty. Cultural depth is a competitive weapon, and it is exactly what our cultural scoring rewards.

Methodology & compliance. Our screening follows the same three-axis standard used by the brands above — phonetic alignment (Mandarin + Cantonese homophones), semantic resonance, and platform compliance. Handle suggestions follow China's Internet User Account Name Regulations (互联网用户账号名称信息管理规定) and each platform's enterprise-account naming rules. Every deliverable is screened, not machine-translated.

Free Preview

Get 3 candidate names instantly

No signup. Paid plans unlock the full risk-checked, numerology-scored report.

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Full Reports

The complete decision package

Free preview gives you names. The report gives you a defensible naming decision — risk screening, numerology, industry alignment, and a document you can hand to partners and designers.

Business Report

$29.99

One-time · 90-day access

  • 8 scored candidates (vs 3 free)
  • Cultural & phonetic risk check per name
  • Five-element industry alignment score
  • 81-numerology fortune grading (Kangxi strokes)
  • Candidate comparison scorecard
  • Usage guidance: trade name vs brand vs social handles
  • Trademark caution notes (non-legal)
  • Downloadable PDF report
Best for market entry

Enterprise Suite

$99.99

One-time · 90-day access · instant delivery

  • Everything in Business Report
  • 12 candidates across sound / meaning / hybrid strategies
  • All-platform handle matrix: WeChat OA · Douyin · Channels · Xiaohongshu · Bilibili · Weibo + Tmall/JD store names — 3 register-ready variants each, with the platform-rule rationale and a manual availability-check protocol
  • AI advisory: consumer first impressions, per-name risk narrative & competitor positioning
  • Bilingual brand stories (EN + 中文) ready for packaging & website
  • 2–3 Chinese slogan options
  • CNIPA trademark pre-screen notes + registration checklist
  • Downloadable professional PDF report
What you getFree previewBusiness $29.99Enterprise $99.99
Scored candidates 3 8 12 (sound/meaning/hybrid)
Homophone & slang risk screen (Mandarin + Cantonese) ✓ basic ✓ full per-name ✓ full + AI risk narrative
Five-element industry fit — ✓ ✓
81-numerology grading — ✓ ✓
Comparison scorecard — ✓ ✓
Social handle matrix (7 platforms × 3 variants) — — ✓ 21 register-ready handles
Tmall / JD store name options — — ✓
AI consumer first-impressions — — ✓
Competitor positioning map — — ✓
Bilingual brand stories (EN + 中文) — — ✓
Chinese slogan options — — ✓ 2–3
CNIPA trademark pre-screen — caution notes ✓ + registration checklist
Print/PDF report — ✓ ✓ professional
Delivery instant instant instant
Validity — 90 days 90 days
✦ Not happy with the candidates? Reply to your PayPal receipt within 14 days with your brand name and one re-run is on us — a fresh candidate set with different strategy weighting, free. Names are regenerated deterministically, so keep your order link: it stays valid for 90 days.

This service provides cultural naming analysis only. It is not legal trademark advice. Always commission a formal trademark search with a qualified IP attorney before registration.

👀 View a full sample report first (watermarked, no signup)

Questions from founders

Our reports flag names that resemble high-frequency commercial characters and advise legal review — but we are not a law firm. Use the report as a shortlist, then commission a formal trademark search in your target jurisdiction (CN, SG, MY, HK, TW).
Traditional Chinese business culture assigns each industry a governing element (tech = metal, beauty = wood, logistics = water...). Names whose characters support that element through the generating cycle are considered auspicious for the trade. It is cultural convention, not science — but your Chinese partners and customers will notice.
A classical system: total the Kangxi stroke counts of the name and look up its fortune grade in the 81-number table. Widely used by Chinese businesses for centuries. We compute and grade it automatically for every candidate.
Yes — the character pools avoid mainland-only slang and the screening covers Cantonese and Hokkien homophone risks where relevant. Note in your brief if you target a specific market.
Reports show simplified (mainland, Singapore, Malaysia). Traditional variants for Taiwan/Hong Kong are noted where they differ in stroke count — which affects numerology.
Translation gives you characters. We give you screened candidates: no bad homophones, industry-appropriate register, numerology graded, pronunciation checked for English speakers — plus the reasoning behind every recommendation.
Every purchase includes our re-run guarantee: reply to your PayPal receipt within 14 days and we regenerate a fresh candidate set with a different strategy weighting — free. Your report link stays live for 90 days.
Yes — view the full watermarked sample report at /business/sample/ (generated for a fictional brand). It shows the exact structure a paying customer receives: candidates, scores, risk notes and the complete handle matrix.