'Union' popular name for Taiwan panda pair
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-01-12 21:18

For netizens from the Chinese mainland and overseas, the most popular names in a name-selection campaign for the pair of pandas for Taiwan were "Tuantuan" and "Yuanyuan", both meaning union.

More than 280,000 netizens offered 62,000 pairs of names for the rare animals on two major portals www.chinataiwan.org and www.sina.com and nearly 50,000 or 16 percent of them recommended "Tuantuan" and "Yuanyuan" by 2:50 p.m. Thursday.

Other popular names include "Hehe" and "Pingping" implying peace, "Lulu" and "Wanwan" meaning the mainland and straits, all indicating netizens' long-aspired wish that the two sides across the Taiwan Strait will be reunified.

A netizen nicknamed "Caoxinxi" prefer "Zhiming" and "Chunjiao",the name of a song by a famous Taiwanese pop band, as his favorite names for the two pandas, saying he hoped that the giant pandas would quickly get acclimatized to Taiwan and bring mainland compatriots' profound affection to the Taiwan island.

The name-selection campaign will eventually decide on 10 pairs of names by the deadline of 20:00 p.m. on Jan. 21. The final choice will be made based on audience ballots on the country's most popular Spring Festival gala on the evening of Jan. 28, the lunar new year eve.