I've said it before and I'll say it again, you should not attempt to translate proper nouns from Chinese into English. For starters (excuse the pun), you'll never know what it is you ordered from the waitress, and secondly, you'll split your sides laughing at people's names.

I've come across one such unfortunate, a new student of mine. Her name is Jin Yu 金雨. This literally means 'Golden Shower'. Now, I'm no expert in such matters but I do believe that a golden shower is a sexual fetish whereby those participating enjoy being urinated on. I'll have to take their word for that.

I thought long and hard before deciding on my son's name, making sure no-one could take the piss out of him (geez, I'm punning my way through this article, aren't I?) in the school playground. We weighed-up the English, Chinese and Russian and decided it was extremely safe.

Maybe the Chinese should start to do the same, now that they have opened up to the rest of the world.