Microsoft does it again with "Bing!"

As an intrepid letter writer to the NY Times points out:

In Mandarin Chinese, the official dialect of China, the syllable romanized as bing holds many meanings, with the most common being ice, frozen and sick — hardly associations one would want users to make to a dynamic and nimble search engine that seeks to challenge the global industry leader.

I remember reading somewhere that the original way that the old Coke slogan "Coke Adds Life" was rendered into Chinese to mean "Coke brings your dead ancestors back to life."

Microsoft follows this pattern admirably.