This is no trifling matter, since space travelers, as probably the only profession in the world, have different names in different countries.

Some fairly outlandish suggestions -- such as "Chinanaut" -- have failed to find many supporters, narrowing the field to two candidates, "Taikonaut" and "Yuhangyuan."

"Taikonaut" is an odd mixture of languages, merging the Chinese word for space "taikong" with the Greek word for sailor, "naus."

Chinese officials do not particularly like this newly-coined word, and state-run newspapers mostly stick to the more technical term "yuhangyuan," meaning "space navigator."

However, "taikonaut" could eventually win out, because it is relatively easy for foreigners to pronounce, and because it alludes to terms for the profession coined by existing space powers.

"Astronaut," the US term, means "star sailor," while cosmonaut, the Anglicized version of the Russian word "kosmonavt," means "sailor of the cosmos."

Possibly for patriotic reasons, there have never been any efforts by the two former rivals to merge the idioms.

Rather, each of the terms has spawned its own class of words in their respective languages. For instance, "astronautics" is called "kosmonavtika" in Russian.

It could be that at the end of the day, no special word for Chinese space travelers will be needed.

After all, Japanese traveling on the US space shuttle are still referred to as astronauts, just as East Germans who hitched a ride on Soviet spacecraft called themselves cosmonauts.

SPACE.WIRE