alulawings:

In the spirit of the Tumblr Language day….I thought I’d like to share trivia about 1D names from the fandom on the Chinese Baidu Tieba platform with those who wouldn’t normally be familiar with it (Though, shoutout to those I see sailing gloriously in both platforms :D)

So there exists boring, clunky phonetic “official” translation of the boys’ names in Chinese (for example used in the Toyota advertisements). However, in many contexts the direct English names are used. But I just adore the simple Chinese nicknames that fans adopted for them too! Each have a single-character moniker (that are sometimes doubled for cuteness, or compounded with adjectives)

Harry is 卷 (juan….(NOT pronounced Spanish Juan lol); means literally, “Curls”). People love calling him  卷 卷 …the more curls the better, eh? haha. Recently I also saw Harry referred to as 卷骚女… “Curly flirty girl/Curly bitch (affectionate)”

Liam is 莉 (li, phonetic. But this is not the usual “li” character for translating male names… the “li” chosen for Liam is a floral one meaning “jasmine”). I’ve seen him called 熊莉，熊 meaning “bear”, and 莉粑粑, 粑粑 meaning a kind of round rice-flour desert treat.

Louis is 丝 (si, pronounced like a hiss, NOT like “see” or “sigh”….“Phonetic” for the “s” in LOUIS, hahaha the irony! - because there’s a tradition of translating the Western name Louis always with the S voiced. However, it has meanings of “silk,” “silky thread,” with connotations of delicateness, so it suits Louis well) He’s often referred to as 丝丝.

Niall is 奶 (nai; phonetic, but it’s got the bonus meaning of “milk” that ties in to Nialler’s innocent image). He’s often called 奶儿  (儿 , “er”, is a common suffix for “-ll” ending English names, but it also fits well with “Nialler”…and it also means “baby”) So he’s the Milk Baby.

 Zayn is 渣 (zha; like “juh” sound in “just”; it’s not phonetic, just based on the Z. Has bonus cute meaning of “little crumbs”) Often Zayn’s called 美渣,  美 meaning beautiful. Everybody wants a crumb of that gawjussness.