I’ve been getting some hits on an old post via search engines — it seems like there are more than a few who would like to see in Yao Ming’s name in Chinese. So, I am happy to oblige. In fact, I’ll do one better — I’ll even throw in proper pronunciation.

Here’s Yao’s name in Chinese in Big-5 encoding: 姚明

You’ll have to enable Traditional Chinese encoding on your browser. (I’m not a fan of simplified Chinese, so sorry, no GB encoding). For those without appropriate browser capabilities, here it is as an image:

As for pronunciation, both characters are in second tone. Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand what that means. The best approximation for the tone is to say it like a question. Try it: Yao? Ming? Make the sound a little shorter, say it faster, and there you have it — Yao Ming’s name in Chinese, and how to pronounce it properly.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Even though it’s not a big deal, but as a native Chinese speaker, it still irks me when national media outlets don’t spend a little time to get it right. I present the following evidence:

ESPN.com:

SI.com:

Yahoo! Sports:

Here’s one place that gets it right, and it better have.
NBA.com

“Yao Ming” does sound better than “Ming Yao,” but still, Yao Ming’s last name is Yao.