中国的乐迷们似乎很早便习惯了给明星起昵称的游戏。

　　I remember watching the early Supergirl singing contest. Fans in the audience held home-made boards with nicknames they made up for their favorite contestants.

　　我记得观看最初的“超级女声”歌唱比赛时，观众席中的粉丝们高举自己亲手制作、写有喜爱选手昵称的牌子。

　　Like in 2005, when today’s superstars such as Li Yuchun and Zhang Liangying were on the show, fans created nicknames with the theme of food, of course, using homonymic characters in their names.

　　例如2005年，当李宇春、张靓颖这些当今炙手可热的巨星登上该选秀节目的舞台时，粉丝们便用食物为主题，结合她们名字中的同音字，创造出各自粉丝团的昵称。

　　For example, hefan (packed food) for He Jie fans, yumi (corn) for Li Yuchun fans.

　　比如，“盒饭”是何洁粉丝团的昵称，李宇春的粉丝团则叫“玉米”。

　　And from then on, the trend kept going on, mostly in various talent shows.

　　从那时起，在各式各样的选秀节目上，粉丝昵称的风潮愈演愈烈。

　　However, the phenomenon doesn’t seem to be the result of the emergence of social networks–fans were spontaneous the whole time: they formed fan bases and apparently needed cute names for them.

　　然而，这种现象似乎并非社交网络兴起的产物。自始至终，都是粉丝们的自发行为：他们成立粉丝基地，显然，这需要给自己起一个讨人喜欢的名字。

　　And singers don’t seem to “take advantage” of this. As Nina Beckhardt mentioned, singers could use this kind of “namescape” and develop a personal brand, or an image, like what Lady Gaga has done with “Little Monsters”.

　　但是歌手们似乎并没有充分利用这种昵称效应。就像尼娜•贝克哈德(编者注：全球知名的品牌命名专家)说的那样，歌手可以利用这种“针对昵称的消遣行为”从而打造出自己的个人品牌或者形象，比如ady Gaga便充分利用了自己粉丝的昵称——“小怪物”。

　　She had an album titled The Fame Monster; teamed up with the headphone company Monster, makers of the now-ubiquitous Beats By Dr Dre; and she recently started a social network site LittleMonsters.com.

　　她曾推出过一张名为《超人气魔神》的专辑;又与如今风靡大街小巷的Beats By Dr Dre系列耳机的制造商魔声公司合作;最近她又创办了社交网站LittleMonsters.com。

　　Also, some monikers are examples of sophisticated branding that evokes a set of meanings about the artists.

　　而且，一些绰号还可以令人联想起一系列与艺人有关的含义，俨然成为了塑造独特品牌效应的真实案例。

　　For example, Katy Perry’s “KatyCats” and rapper Wiz Khalifa’s “Taylors”–Perry loves cats, and Khalifa’s favorite shoes are his Chuck Taylors.

　　例如，凯蒂•佩里的粉丝团“凯蒂猫窝”因凯蒂•佩里爱猫而得名，而说唱歌手维兹•卡利法的粉丝“泰勒军团”得名于他最喜爱的Converse查克•泰勒系列球鞋。

　　So, when Chinese fans say “I’m a …”, it doesn’t mean anything more than “I love his/her music”.

　　所以，当中国粉丝表明“我是某某粉”时，只是意味着“我喜欢他\她的音乐”。

　　The nickname phenomenon can actually go further here. And it doesn’t hurt for Chinese singers and their teams to think about.

　　其实，“昵称现象”可以走得更远。对于明星和他们的团队而言，这是个有益无害、值得深思的问题。