Sing-Chi
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Meaning
stars racing by (星馳); famously borne by Stephen Chow, comedy filmmaker and star (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), drawn from Tang poet Wang Bo's prose
The story
Some names come from a poem and end up on a marquee. Stephen Chow's given name Sing-chi, the racing stars of 星馳, derives from Preface to the Prince of Teng's Pavilion, an essay by the Tang dynasty poet Wang Bo. The boy who carried it became a filmmaker whose mo lei tau comedy, fast and gleefully absurd, has had a significant influence on Chinese popular culture. In 2001 his Shaolin Soccer grossed over fifty million US dollars worldwide and stood as the highest-grossing domestic film in Hong Kong at the time; Kung Fu Hustle passed one hundred six million worldwide in 2004. In American birth records Sing-Chi sits at the floor, which says more about what those records capture than about the name. A Tang dynasty poet's phrase, more than a thousand years later, still gets top billing in Hong Kong comedy.
How popular is Sing-Chi around the world?
Sing-Chi does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
United States
under 5 a year
Sing-Chi does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Keep exploring
The Sing-Chi deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Sing-Chi truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Sing-Chi fits with your family’s names and surname.
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