Chinese Domaining: The Lucky Number Eight (8)

TLD Registry, the registry of Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) top level domains, is releasing the fourth installment of their Chinese Domaining Masterclass blog series.

TLD Registry presented the world’s first, and still currently the world’s only Chinese Domaining Masterclass, at the industry-leading domain investing conference, NamesCon 2015. After several months of research, development, writing, and refining, they created a 120-page curriculum for western domain investors to use as a resource to help them confidently invest in Chinese-specific domains, without knowing a single word of Chinese.

I attended the “Chinese Domaining Masterclass” in NamesCon and I wrote a blog post about it: 10 Things I Learned About Chinese Domain Names.

Now, TLD Registry is releasing portions of the acclaimed and sought-after masterclass curriculum to the general public, in the form of a blog series, which will be weekly blog posts focused on providing tips and tricks to help you invest in Chinese IDNs, again, without knowing anything about the Chinese language.

The articles from the blog series are written by TLD Registry’s Mitch Watkins.

The first installment was about Chinese numerics, specifically, the number seven. The second one was about the number three. The third was about the number 4.

Today’s topic: “The Number Four (8)”

8: 八, Pinyin: Bā

The number 8 in Chinese culture is considered the all-conquering lucky number. Much like the number 4 we covered last time, the number 8 also derives most of its “luckiness” out of sheer coincidental pronunciation. In Mandarin, the character for 8 (八) is pronounced “bā,” which is very close to 发 (fā) in certain dialects, such as the prestigious Cantonese dialect of the rich southern provinces.

This sound-alike character 发 (fā) has many meanings, the most prominent of which is “to prosper,” especially in a financial sense. Consequently, the number 8 symbolizes “generating wealth,” “getting rich,” and “to prosper.”

In the context of investing in numeric domains with the number 8, this number is very well-known and lucrative because of what it represents: wealth, prosperity and riches. If you’re trying to sell something to a Chinese consumer, having 8’s in your domain string can be very beneficial (so long as every other number makes sense, of course).

Please read the rest of the very interesting article here.

In the meantime, you can take advantage of the free Chinese domain spinning tool over at ChineseLandrush.com. At ChineseLandrush.com, there are hundreds of free, premium-level Chinese domain suggestions made by real live native Chinese speakers, refreshed often, that are available at normal retail registrar “General Availability” prices.