Chinese Domaining: The Number Nine

TLD Registry, the registry of Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) top level domains, is releasing the fifth 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. The fourth was about the number 8.

Today’s topic: “The Number Nine”

9: 九; Pinyin: Jiǔ

The number nine in Chinese culture is said to symbolize limitations, however that does not necessarily give it a negative meaning. Contrarily, the number nine represents the farthest possible reach of mortal effort. It’s the largest possible single-digit number, which actually represents power and prestige. In Chinese ancient culture, a king would be referred to as “the noble body of 9 & 5.”  At the same time, Chinese people in the past would regard odd numbers within 10 as Yang (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) and regard even numbers within 10 as Yin (2, 4, 6, 8). This means that the number nine is the biggest number for Yang, making it a very important number for Chinese people.

The Mandarin spelling and pronunciation of the number nine is “jiǔ,” and the Cantonese spelling and pronunciation is “gau.” The most common sound-a-like for the number nine is “a long time.”

• The noun [n.] sound-alikes for the number nine is: uncle, liquor, long duration of time, and dog (Cantonese)
• The adjective [adj.] sound-alikes for the number nine is: after all, at once, then, right away, old
• The adverb [adv.] sound-alike for the number nine is: enough (Cantonese)

It’s now time to go over the three specific categories that western domainers should keep in mind when investing in numeric domains in the Chinese domain market space: references, puns, and the unit of innate meaning.

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.