Starting the new Adobe Photoshop CS4 on my good old laptop I usually have quite some time to look at the blue startup splash screen with the credits. Just a moment ago I started CS4 again but this time one of the names on this screen really catched my attention: Xingming Jia.
I have to admit that my Chinese is very, very poor. Elementary school level poor. But I would translate this name usually like this:
Xingming: “family name and given name”
Jia: “are fake”
For me Xingming Jia appears to be a typical Chinese fake name. Something like I would use in the big bad internet whenever I have to fill in one of this annoying address hunter type of forms which I have to complete in order to get through to the download of my desired piece of software. Just that I personally usually identify myself as “Foreman Lastnam” in this forms – it always works!
I have to stress again: I am quite weak on Chinese and I really do not think that Adobe credits a Xingming Jia in case this is not the real name of the person. And Chinese parents can absolutely freely choose the name of their child. Everything is possible – in theory. I honestly don’ want to step on someone’s toes here, but just in case some actually is named Xingming Jia in China, would that not make his name the running gag in his school class, then at University and finally within the Chinese team of Adobe? Would not all of them have a really good laugh?
Thus my question to my Chinese native readers: is it really likely that this guy is named Xingming Jia? And if so … would that be a good idea for a name?
Already after a couple of minutes after my encounter I was convinced that I simply read the name wrong. It just could not be. To check again I restarted my Photoshop and read … nothing! The name was gone! Another restart and … again no Xingming Jia. Photoshop seems to alter the names featured on the splash screen. Somewhat irritated I opened the dialogue „Help / about Photoshop“. And there I was lucky again: Xingming Jia is a member of the group Adobe Quality Engineering.
Whatever, after working with the Photoshop CS4 for two days I can tell, that this guy did an excellent job. The quality of the new Photoshop is amazing and I wish that besides Adobe a lot of other companies bring the one or the other Xingming Jia into their teams.
Zaijian and bye bye,
Michael (This is my real name - no fake)
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Comments
Chinese Native Speaker's Comments :)
It is very interesting that you noticed this name. It seems like you do have some knowledge in Chinese. :-)
Here are my two cents:
1. Naming convention in China and in western world is different.
A typical Chinese name can have 2 to 3 characters. In some rare cases, 4 or even more. Most of the Chinese family names have only 1 character. In Chinese it is written like "Family Name + Given Name". For Chinese who live outside China, for communications' convenience, they always put their Given Name first followed by their Family Name in order to avoid confusions.
Someone might introduce himself in China like: Zhang Dan while in USA Dan Zhang. Or someone who will introduce herself in China as Ma YuanYuan while in USA YuanYuan Ma.
This mysterious guy/lady in PS CS4.0 is obviously called in China "Jia Xingming" while Jia is Family Name.
2. Pronunciation in Chinese is difficult.
Chinese is a language which uses tone to differenciate words. A lot of Chinese characters have the exactly the same pronunciation and can only be differenciated via their tunes. Sometimes 2 or 3 Chinese characters might have exactly the same pronunciation and same tune. They can then only be differenciated in a sentence or in a certain context. Therefore Chinese is called a high-context language. While French, German are low-context language -- when you hear a sentence spoken in German, you know exactly gender, plural or singular, past or present etc (I know this because I am living in Germany and speak German as well.)
A famous example about this pronunciation ambiguity is:
Ma (tune 1): Mother
Ma (tune 2): sesame or cannabis or numb
Ma (tune 3): horse
Ma (tune 4): to scold someone with harsh words
In yours PS CS 4.0 case, the family name Jia can be:
Jia (tune 3): 1) a common family name in China. or 2) fake, not real but they are totally different characters.
Jia can also be
Jia (tune 1): 1) family 2) good 3) to add
Jia (tune 2): 1) to click to fold 2) bean
Jia (tune 4): 1) rack 2) fight 3) unit of measurement to count planes or piano.
This Jia XingMing could be "Fake Name" or "Jia Star Bright" or "Jia Prosperous Brigh" or "Jia Apricose Twitter".
Hope that my comments could be of any use for you. :-)
Cheers
Shen
Awesome explanation! Very
Awesome explanation! Very helpful. Thank you so much, Shen.
Best regards,
Michael
I don't know why I found this
I don't know why I found this so interesting but I did. I am also impressed that you noticed something like that.
Maybe exists
Hi,
I don´t speak Chinese, just a little bit of English. I fpund your post interesting and I just wanted to let you know that there is a post in the adobe exchange with the same name:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&ex...
Did you get any feedback?
Best regards and congrats for your photos.
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