sigh
I ask because my best friend’s (younger, slightly transy) sister named her son Xao Alexander. :rolleyes: (Her baby’s daddy liked the name “Xao” but wanted to spell it “Zao.” She “won” that argument. :eek: )
I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to your question, but you might want to ask Vietnamese and Portuguese speakers for their translations as well.
A quick spin on Google finds “xao” (with various diacriticals) on websites written in those languages.
“transy”?
Thanks for the info - it seems to be a town in Vietnam as well as a noodle or something.
Transvestite?
“Transy” should read “trashy.” :smack: (She’s a bit of a skank.)
I believe this word means “small”, and is sort of pronounced like the word “chow”, but with a “sh” sound instead of a “ch” sound. It would be written sort of like this:
|
/ |
/
Three strokes, starting with a J stroke, then little bird wings on each side. The intonation is \ / (down, then up). So, the pitch drops, then rises.
Sorta like how a question in English is pronounced with a rising pitch at the end. Substitute a question mark for the period in the previous sentence to see what I mean.
Apparently my ascii art got screwed up… here’s another try:
…|
./…|…
…/
(if I replace space with periods)
Since Chinese is not written in roman letters, the real question here is: does “Xao” represent the romanization of any Chinese word? None of the three major systems of romanization (pinyin, Wade-Giles, and Yale) allow the combination of an ‘X’ initial and a ‘ao’ final.
But, who’s to say a name has to stick to established systems of romanization? It could be a way to write the word normally romanized as ‘xiao’, which a previous poster indicated means small, but this would make for quite a weird name (and a weird romanization to boot).
If they pronounce it like ‘zao’, it could mean a whole lot of things (anything from “rotten” to “early”).
It’s pronounced so that it rhymes with “mayo.” Early? Rotten? Check and … well, I’ll check back in a couple of years.
Rhymes with “mayo” eh? Well, I could be mistaken, but I can’t think of any Chinese word that rhymes with “mayo” (at least in standard pronunciation). “Xiao [small]” is pronounced like the “show-” part of “shower” (as in the thing that sprays water on you in the tub, not a person who demonstrates).
If it helps, Zao also means “suffer,” “chisel,” “flea,” “bath,” “the chirping of birds,” “clamour,” “stove,” “soap,” and “build”–depending on the tone and the context. 
Heck, be glad she named him something relatively simple like “Xao.” She could have named him Lemonjello or Oranjello.
This could provide a clue: http://www.newgrounds.com/collections/xiao.html
Or it could just be really entertaining flash animation.
Xao isn’t valid a valid pinyin (romanized Chinese) spellling. Xiao is. The most common meaning is “small” (xiao3), but according to zhongwen.com there are 20 characters with that spelling (divided among the four tones).
You’ll commonly hear it said that Pinyin “x” is equivalent to the “sh” sound in “shoe”. That’s not strictly true. Pinyin has two related letters, “x” and “sh”, which both sound a little like the sound in “shoe” or “shove”. The difference is the position of the lips and tongue. When you say “x”, the lips are barely parted and the tongue is curled down and inward. There is kind of an inherent hiss to the sound. Pinyin “x” can only be followed by “i” or “u”. When you say “sh”, the lips are open and rounded and the tongue is curled upward.
I’d best stop here before this develops into a pronunciation lesson, so here’s the summary. Zao good (but pronounced “dzao”), shao good (remember to curl your tongue), xao bad. That is all.
Also note that “spellling” is not a valid English spelling. My bad.
Why not N!xau — the name of the late Bushman who starred in The Gods Must Be Crazy
As pointed out earlier, it’s not any standardized Chinese romanization. Nor does it correspond to the romanizations used in Singapore/Malaysia Chinese communities. Sing/Malay Chinese have some really unusual spellings based on whatever dialect the name is, but they don’t use “X”.
so if your friend was trying to do Chinese, she miss-spelled her kid’s name :eek:
Well, thanks for all of the info. She wasn’t trying to go for anything Chinese - her baby’s daddy used the name “Zao” for something or other online, and she liked it, but wanted to spell it with an “X.” Fabulous way to name your child, isn’t it?
I’ve seen the word xiao used to describe food.
One place by me has “xiao-ping pork” whick is small strips of spicy pork (fabulous by the way).
Whether this is any proof that the most common use of the word in the US is for “small”, I have no idea.
Not that strange – “small” is generally considered the literal meaning of the English name Paul, Spanish Pablo, and the like.