What does Longwang mean?

This is making the rounds of all my friends - Tropical Storm Longwang, heading towards Korea and Japan.

One sec.

<beavis>Longwang. snicker. He said “long wang”. Heh heh.</beavis>

Ok, it’s out of my system. But seriously, is this an actual name somewhere, and this is just a coincidence? I know in the US we have a list of names we pull from for tropical storms/hurricanes - is there something similar in that region?

Well, it certainly shows up on this of cyclone names from the Hong Kong observatory.

http://www.weather.gov.hk/informtc/sound/tcname2000e.htm

It was submitted by China, so might mean something like “Dragon King” (but they don’t supply the actual characters to be sure.

Oh, wait. They actually did have a Chinese-language link to the page so you could see the characters. It is, indeed, “Dragon King”.

You have to love the Dope! Thanks a lot, charizard.

…and when you think about it, a Dragon King would be expected to have a longwang.

Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. And somebody else woulda said it.

Maybe Longwang means ‘Rita’.

You are soooooooo right. :slight_smile:
…longwang. BAND NAME!!!

Cool! We affected the Google-banner!

Everybody Long Wang tonight!

I dare any western meteorologist to keep a straight face while reporting on Hurricane Long Wang:

Long Wang is gaining strength…
Nothing the size of Long Wang has been seen this season…
Long Wang has left the area drenched with moisture…
The effects of Long Wang are going to be felt for some time…
:stuck_out_tongue:

I should point out that the word doesn’t actually sound like “long wang”. The ‘o’ actually uses the “oo” sound as in “cool.” The ‘a’ is the “ah” sound. And even the ‘w’ has a hint of ‘v’ in it, sort of like a hybrid of the English ‘w’ and the German ‘w’.

This is, though, just the sort of thing that happens when going between languages. Take, for instance, Microsoft’s entry into the Chinese market. They chose the literal characters for “micro” and “soft”, but apparently to native Mandarin speakers the anatomical connotations are, well, overwhelming.

Again, one has to imagine the newscasters getting copy like:

 *&lt;micro&gt;&lt;soft&gt; is down in after-hours activity.*

Does anyone else think it’s funny that, of all the dopers, *Charizard * was the one who said it mean Dragon King? :smiley:

Bangcock Less Likely As Longwang Goes In Continent

And here is a picture of it.