You may know many high-end foreign banks, such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citigroup, etc., but do you know why they have such Chinese names? You must be able to say, it’s transliteration. Not really. Recently, the Shiwuyan website published an article that talked about a lot of interesting knowledge about naming foreign banks.
For example, the Chinese name of some banks has nothing to do with its English name. Citibank is one of them. Its English literal translation is "City Bank", so why did it become Citibank? It turns out that when it first entered China more than 100 years ago, people didn’t know what to call it. When they saw many American flags hanging at the door, they called it “the bank with the Citizen flag.” As time went by, it became known as Citibank.
Unlike Citi, which waves a small flag to show off its foreign background, the Chinese names of some banks are deliberately used to hide their true background. For example, DBS Bank, the largest commercial bank in Singapore, was originally named "Development Bank of Singapore". However, when it acquired Hong Kong Guangan Bank in 1998 to enter the Hong Kong market, in order not to offend Hong Kong people, it chose a name with no origin. : DBS Bank. In fact, "star" is the homophonic pronunciation of Singapore, and "zhan" is the abbreviation of development. The name is also used to build the plank road in the open and cover it in the dark.
The weirdest name is Standard Chartered Bank. Of course, the name must be auspicious. We Chinese rarely use "Zha" and "Da" in naming. Such words don’t sound good when spoken out. In fact, the English name of Standard Chartered Bank should be translated as "Standard Chartered Bank". But when it entered China, it was the first to enter Hong Kong, and the English word "franchise" in Cantonese was "Standard Chartered", so it could only follow the local customs and become Standard Chartered Bank.
Look, there is so much interesting knowledge about the name of the bank. Have you got it?