# Did you know this meaning of "88"?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-this-meaning-of-88/692523>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 7, 2014, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-this-meaning-of-88/692523 "2014-07-07T10:52:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 6

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**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2014, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-this-meaning-of-88/692523/101 "2014-07-14T13:52:10Z")

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In the NYTimes, I think over the weekend, there was an article about people who post to Stormfront, the racist, neo-Nazi’s messageboard. At least a couple of the usernames mentioned end in 88. That was my first exposure to “oh, this _is_ a thing on those types of messageboards.”

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**Author:** ![ycc\_Swe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/43a26b/32.png) [@ycc\_Swe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ycc_Swe)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2014, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-this-meaning-of-88/692523/102 "2014-07-14T15:24:17Z")

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I had never heard of this. Just say: 8 is pronounced similarly to “get” (money) fa ( ) in Kantonese and 8 is therefore lucky nbr for all Chinese. (Olympics starting 8/8-08, 8:08 etc) They hardly register one phone nbr without at least a few 8:s in China. The more 8:s the more expensive etc etc  
Must also consider this when evaluating.  
Sorry if someone already said this.

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2014, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-this-meaning-of-88/692523/103 "2014-07-15T16:13:20Z")

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Only from this message board. I believe there was a racist doper with 88 as part of their name, as well as a non-racist doper who said it just referred to the year or something with ham radio. Maybe this all came up in the Pit thread Dex mentioned.

I also learned that 8 is a lucky number in Japan, and so some things will be deliberately modified to have 8 of them. (Apparently in China, too. Makes sense.)

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