"She added that: "If you think about it, 10 years ago in the US, it was kind of weird to go online and buy a product with a brand that you can't even pronounce.

她补充道：“如果你仔细想想，10年前在美国，上网购买一个你甚至不会发音的品牌的产品有点奇怪。

I asked several Western friends and they agreed these names are generally difficult to pronounce in countries that use the Latin alphabet.

But being easy to pronounce is not the only requirement - having the right connotations is critical too.

While it is easy to spell and pronounce, nobody in the English-speaking world wants to drink "snow", which means frozen water.

Ries pointed out that one critical barrier for Chinese companies to make a genuine global takeoff is their names, which are generally difficult to pronounce in countries that use the Latin alphabet.

He listed a number of pinyin translations that English-speaking population might find hard to pronounce: Xiaomi, Mengniu, iQiyi to name just a few, even though some of them have reaped initial gains in the global market.

"Although pinyin may make some names difficult to pronounce for foreigners, Huawei is a good example how a strong brand with strong consumer experience and branding effort can cut through the clutter," she said.

"The name has to be simple and easy to pronounce," said Liu.

The name was considered largely by netizens as hard to pronounce and understand.

In 2022, nine out of 10 consumers were aware of private brands; half of them were able to pronounce the name of each store brand they recognized; and 35 percent said they made purchases in the past six months.

Ford Motor Co's Mustang is known to many in China as yema, which means wild horse, but now the United States car manufacturer's dealers in the country will have to learn to pronounce its English name after Ford lost a lawsuit to a little-known carmaker called Yema Auto.

Zhang confessed to his guilt in court, and the court adjourned the proceedings and will pronounce a sentence at a later stage.