Internet vote is launched to name Austrian zoo's panda cub

Oct 12, 2007, 14:00 GMT

Vienna - Will it be 'Beautiful Music', 'Bamboo Boy' or rather 'Lucky Dragon'?

Vienna's Schoenbrunn Zoo has launched an internet vote to name the panda cub born to pandas Yang Yang and Long Hui in late August.

As the latest addition to Vienna's zoo is technically a Chinese citizen - its parents are in Austria on loan from China for another six years - its name is to be Chinese as well.

China's authorities offered a shortlist of four names for the first panda cub in Europe to be born without the aid of artificial insemination, the zoo said on its website.

Internet users can klick for 'Hua Shan' - naming the cub, believed to be a male in honour of one of five Chinese holy mountains. 'Mei Yue' or 'Beautiful Music', a nod to Austria, are other options.

More complicated for non-Asians is the added twist 'Zhu Wa', the 'Bamboo Boy'. In Chinese, the words for 'bamboo' and 'pig' are pronounced similarly, the zoo said. This is the Year of the Pig according to the Chinese calendar.

'Fu Long', or 'Lucky and Happy Dragon' is a self-explanatory symbol of luck and good prospect, even for Europeans with little insight into Chinese culture.

The new furry superstar remains unfazed by all the attention. The cub - the zoo is still not sure about its gender - continues to grow and is slowly starting to crawl and move about the enclosure where it and its mother Yang Yang have been since the birth.

But whether the cub is named after a mountain or a dragon won't matter to most of the zoo's visitors who have been admiring the cute little furball.

For them, the baby panda is simply 'Kruemel', German for 'little crumb', and will likely remain a Kruemel even if he adds another 100 kilos over the next years.