Yang Zi recently shared something to fans in the reality show Chinese Restaurant 3 — that her real name is in fact Yang Ni-ao 杨旎奥!
When her co-stars started calling her Xiao Zi (小紫) on the show, she comments that she’s having a hard time getting used to the name as no one has ever called her Xiao Zi before. She explained that it’s because she’s often called Yang Zi (杨紫), Xiao Houzi which means Little Monkey Zi (小猴紫) or Ao-ao (奥奥), the last nickname being born from her real name.
Apparently, her father who is quite nationalistic chose the word 奥 (ao) because of the idiom 成功申奥 (cheng gong shen ao) which means to have a successful bid for the Olympics. Yang Zi was born on 6 November 1992 in Beijing. Although China failed to get the bid a few times, it was finally successful in bringing home the Olympics to Beijing on July 13, 2001!
Yang Zi’s mom eventually changed her name to Zi (紫) as she entered showbiz because Ni-ao was supposedly too hard to pronounce and remember. I personally think that Ni-ao has a nice ring to it too, much more a nice meaning behind it! Zi (紫) on the other hand translates to purple in English.
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