A linguist has left viewers in stitches by revealing the pretty rude meaning some popular English girls’ names have in Cantonese.
In a TikTok video, user Dr Candise Lin @candiselin86 tells viewers that the feminine ending “sie” literally translates to “poo” in her mother tongue.
She then explains that Jessie is “bird s***”, which instantly conjures up some unpleasant mental imagery.
Meanwhile, the girls’ name Maisie is a bit more flattering because it means “beautiful s***”.
Rosie is “old s***”, so it could be a name to grow into, Josie is “morning s***”, which could frankly be worse, and Issy is the unhygienic-sounding “ear s***”.
Sissy, as you can probably guess, translates into “double s***”.
Since it was uploaded on Wednesday (September 1) the hilarious video has been watched more than one million times and viewers were in stitches.
One user joked: “Should have named my daughter Josie, she was born in the morning.”
Someone else, called Jessy, said: “So now I know where not to travel because I don’t want people laughing at my name.”
A third said: “My name is Josephine but thank goodness I don’t go by Josie.”
“That’s what I’m calling earwax from now on,” quipped another viewer.
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Someone else said: “Nothing better than a Josie after a morning coffee.”
Dr Candise offers tuition in Mandarin and Cantonese via her website and also has an Instagram account where she shares Cantonese slang.
This comes after a mum said she was worried she had done her son an injustice after giving him a “cute” animal name that people now tease him over.
She said: “We met someone once and when they asked our kids’ names, they got angry when we said this one and said we were cruel and abusive to give a kid a ‘weird’ name.”