Obama & McCains chinese names

I love transliteration and below is a perfect example as to why. This week's Chinese Soundbites was about the presidential election here, and included in the vocab was the chinese names for Obama & McCain.

Most chinese version of english names focus more on the sound instead of the meaning. Because of this, when you take translation at one character at a time, sometimes you can get some really funny results.

• 麦凯恩 [màikǎiēn] John McCain (麦 oats, barley; 凯 triumphant, victorious; 恩 kind act, grace)
  

So McCain's name in chinese (if taken literally) could mean " a kind act of a victorious oat"

• 奥巴马 [àobāmǎ] Barack Obama (奥 obscure, mysterious; 巴 to hope; 马 horse)

And then Obama's name could mean "a mysterious hopeful horse"

A final note about translating chinsese names: most characters have more than one meaning, I just posted what worked the best or was the one that I'm more familiar with.