The American Flag in China
On a recent trip to Chinatown in San Francisco, I noticed that although most American banks have transparent names in Chinese (e.g., Bank of America is 美洲銀行 ‘America(n continent) Bank’, WaMu is 華盛頓互惠銀行 ‘Washington Reciprocate Bank’). However, Citibank is called 花旗銀行, literally ‘flower flag bank.’ Could it be an attempt to approximate the sound of citi? In Mandarin it would be hua1 qi2, and in Cantonese faa1 kei4. Okay, so it’s not the sound. Maybe some previous name of Citibank had something to do with flags or flowers, or had a name that sounded more like the Chinese characters? Well, no. So what is the answer?
It turns out that 花旗 is in fact an old Chinese word for the American Flag, which, according to this entry, came about due to Chinese people thinking that the Stars-and-Stripes was fancy and colorful with its stripes, stars, and three colors: in other words, flowery. America was thus called the ‘flower flag nation’ 花旗國. Though this name for America and its flag is no longer used in China, it managed to remain in the translation for the bank, as well as some place/institution names in China. But, interestingly, the Vietnamese name for America is Hoa Kỳ, which is loaned from the Chinese.
The only remaining question is: why is Citibank called “America Bank” in Chinese? Well, the Chinese Wikipedia entry for the bank says that it was the first American bank with a branch in China (Shanghai), opening in 1902. So, that could be a reason, though I’m not sure if 花旗 was still being used at that time. Another interesting note: outside the mainland and Taiwan, Citibank used to be known as 萬國寶通銀行 (uh… ‘ten thousand nations treasure transferring bank’? Maybe ‘international commerce bank’?), though recently Hong Kong and New York branches have changed to the version used on the Mainland.