Chinese numerology and domain names

Most Chinese are not used to English domains names. When Internet came to China in 1995, we began to use Chinese Pinyin, which are a set of Roman character used as phonetic symbol. But number or combination of number and letters became popular and widely accepted. One of the earliest and biggest ISP and portal website use number domain name 163.com, 163 is a telephone number for people to dial in.

According to Chinese numerology, 163 is not as auspicious as 168. Because Chinese numerology has three basic factors:

First, like everything else in nature, numbers have yin and yang qualities. Odd numbers (1,3,5,7,9) are considered yang while even numbers (2,4,6,8) are considered yin. Since yang quality is associated with growth and prosperity, the yang numbers are generally more desirable than the yin numbers. However, there are many exceptions to the rule, and many other rules such as the combination of Yin and Yang is very important.

Second: Numbers are assessed not only in terms of their yin and yang quality or their symbolic meanings, but also on homonyms, or their sound. And different dialect has different sound for same character, the same number may be regarded as auspicious in one place but has different fate in another.

Another one is combination which gives its component new meaning. As we know, 8 is very auspicious in Chinese, because 8 sounds like "prosperous" or "fa" in Chinese (or Cantonese). 888 is triple prosperous, so one of the most famous online casino website use this number combination. Six is also very auspicious, because it has the same sound as "profitable" or "luk" in Cantonese. Quite contrary to westerner's opinion, 666 is triple profitable or smoothly. In the combination 168, people give 6 same meaning as "road" or "way", 168 has the meaning of "making profit on your way". but 163 sounds like "kill on your way". so I say that 163 is not so good as 163.

"I want something dot com" is a very easy domain name for English people, such as I want candy, I want mummy, I want candy movie dot com, etc, but this really means nothing for Chinese. The equivalent of "I want" is 51, which can be followed by another number(s) such as 8 (which means "I want prosperous" ), or by simple English word, or by pinyin, or just several letters which is short for something.

But quite oddly, although number domains name are very easy to remember, but seldom go up into the first hundred website except for 163.com. Most of the first hundred websites use pinyin as domain name, such as Baidu (means one hundred degree or sailing), souhu (which means search fox), or tianya (which means the remotest or end of the earth), or video website tudou (which means potato).