Word of the Day
Chinese astronauts are not called sinonauts, as I mused before when they sent their first man into space. Be grateful for that because sinonauts sounds like someone with a bad cold trying to get rid of snot.
Like astronauts for the Americans and cosmonauts for the Russians, the Chinese have their own tag for their spacemen: yuhangyuans or taikonauts. Yuhangyuan is Chinese for “space navigator ” a term used by Chinese official media when talking about its astronauts. The word taikonaut is apparently from taikong, the Chinese word for space.
I like taikonauts better because it fits with the whole -nauts paradigm. If the French decides to send a French person out in space, they might just call him/her Franconaut. Or Just-plain-nauts. Besides yuhanguan sounds suspiciously like ‘hunghang’, in Tagalog. Which is, if you think about it you need to be when you decide to strap yourself on a tin-can powered by a firecracker. But that’s just me.
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
jobert
hmmm… how about takeoutnauts. I mean, think about it.. Chinese takeoutnauts.
Oct 16th, 2005
banzai cat
Heh. My inner SF geekhood just squealed. ‘Taikonauts’. Heh.
Interesting enough, how does that apply to the rest of the world? Anglonauts for British? Pinoynaut for us?
And what would you call a UN-directed space mission?
… Mixed-nauts! Har!
Oct 17th, 2005
rene
well, if i may dissect the word “taikonaut” with my cebuano thinking mind - it would surely leave a very bad taste in my mouth. hehe. here it goes:
tai = we all know what this is. ;-)
konaut… konot = not exactly a body part i’d like to point out. i don’t even know its english counterpart though that’s probably because i’m not medical person. maybe petite can show you. hehe.
taikonaut… taikonaut… makes me smile just saying it out loud! haha!
Oct 17th, 2005
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