What’s the world coming to when parents think the best name for their child is @. Fortunately the Chinese authorities stepped in, but seemingly only because it would ruin their ID card naming system!

The unidentified couple were outed by Chinese officials outraged by decadant Western naming practices that were insidiously entering the glorious Chinese People’s Republic.

Li Yuming, the vice director of the State Language Commission said that the father had told him: “The whole world uses it to write e-mails and translated into Chinese it means ‘love him.’”

Good intentions?

This is because the @ symbol pronounced in English as ‘at’ sounds like the Chinese phrase “love him.” Either way we would have thought the poor kid was going to get soundly beaten up when he gets to school. It would certainly scupper any attempt at a personal email account in the future.

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