How do we call the Chinese astronauts?

Factual Questions
21

Kong Chi is space. If I was unsure how to say it to one of my chinese friends, I’d say Kong chi de ren. Kong chi yuan would be okay too. Ren for person, yuan for official.

22

So, what will other xxx-nauts be called ?

23

If astronaut indeed is American specific, what would be the neutral word for someone who travels in outer space?

24

if the word ‘astronaut’ is imperialistic, china don’t seem to think so, as they use the word astronaut themselves in their english newspapers, whilst prefering the term yuhangyuan rather than taikongren in chinese. perhaps this naming convention is a relic from the cold war that should be dumped with this entry of the third and possibly more players later on?

kong1chi4 is ‘air’, ‘tai4kong1’ is ‘space’ and ‘tai4kong1ren2’ is used as ‘astronaut’ here.

doesn’t ‘taikonaut’ sounds at all wierd to those who don’t understand chinese?

25

What about Exonaut as a neutral word for space travellers, regardless of how they where transported up there. It describes quite well where they are (out of earth’s atmosphere), and it sound quite cool (whereas e.g. Spacenaut doesn’t sound cool).

26

My five cents:

I’d drop the -naut ending entirely. After all, it’s from an Indoeuropean language. Why not simply “space traveller” respectively the translation of this term in the particular language? It describes what it’s about, everybody can immediately understand what it means, it’s neutral, not an arbitrarily created neologism, and it seems to be accepted in this thread already, judging from the question “how to call space travellers?” asked here.

27

Well, the Chinese food delivery guys around here apparently like to be called “Fifteen min-nauts”. :wink:

Is “yuhangyuan” pronounced (you-aing-you-an)?

28

Dave Letterman says that they went into space looking for more doors to slip a menu under. :smiley:

29

Casey1505, it’s three words yu hang yuan. can’t think of anything similar in english at the moment for yu… but the other two is roughly (hung-u-and)

30

Toa chie

31

You forgot the french, they call their folks in space “spationaut”

32

What do you call a Cuban astronaut?

A castronaut.