The Ladies Cannot Resist Skinny Skin Monkey

hey don’t do it so much anymore, but the Chinese entertainment media of an earlier generation used to sometimes refer to American celebrities by special, locally- invented nicknames. Some of them were a little insulting — for example, Frank Sinatra was known as “Skinny Skin Monkey” 瘦皮猴 in reference to the very slim Sinatra of the 1930s. To this day, Sinatra is called by this name in Chinese. Likewise, Elvis Presley’s Chinese name is “Cat King” 猫王 He was called this because of the screaming bands of teenage girls that always surrounded him. And Elizabeth Taylor was called “Jade Girl” 玉女 I’m told this was because of the color of her eyes, though they were closer to violet than green. Nowadays, there seems to be much less enthusiasm in China for coining inventive names for famous foreigners. It’s more along the lines of “Ah-nwo” (阿诺) for Arnold Schwarzenegger, just in an approximation of his name. That said, former U.S. President George W. Bush ended up for a while with the unfortunate Chinese name “Little Bush” (小 布什 – shao-boo-shur), though really he was just called that to distinguish him from his father, “Old Bush” (老布什 – lao- boo-shur). In any case, a few years into his presidency he became known as just “Bush”. On the other hand, the name of John Quincy Adams gets rendered phonetically, rather than calling him “Little Adams”, but that’s likely because almost no one in China (or anywhere else outside the U.S.) has ever heard of John Quincy Adams.