Giant Panda Cub Named

The Tokyo metropolitan government announced on September 25 the name of the female giant panda cub which was born in June at the Ueno Zoo. The baby panda was named Xiang Xiang (香香).
 
Members of the public from both Japan and abroad submitted applications offering suggestions as to what to name the panda cub, and a selection committee chose the name from the top 100 names proposed. The number of applications submitted reached about 320,000, which is the largest number ever.
 
The list of the proposed 100 names was not open to the public in order to prevent others from preemptively filing for a trademark registration.
 
In Japan, applying to register the name of an animal at a zoo for a trademark is very unusual; however, recently a western lowland gorilla named “Shabani” at the Nagoya Higashiyama Zoo has become very popular because many visitors think he is “too” handsome. Coffee-table books and a variety of other goods featuring Shabani are on sale, and Shabani’s name in Japanese and English have already been registered and protected as trademarks.