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It’s not only rocket scientists and journalists who are following the course of“Shenzhou V”,or“Divine ship/vessel V”．There are also lexicographers, or dictionary compilers．The flight of the Spacecraft last week might help put some new words into orbit．
One of them is a western media coinage used to refer to the Chinese astronauts．It’s a combination of the Chinese pinyin“taikong”, meaning space, and the English“astronaut”, from classical Greek：“star sailor/navigator”, for people who was going into space as a career．
In the Reuters and AP reports of October 15,“taikonaut”was used as a proper noun．For example：
The long March 2F rocket carrying“taikonaut”Yang Liwei lifted off into a clear blue sky over the Gobi desert at 9 am and entered its orbit 10 minutes later．
A Long March 2F rocket called the Shemhou V－“divine ship”in Chinese－carried a single“taikonaut”named Yang Liwei, 38, following Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American Alan Shepard in 1961．
The word“taikonaut”is not a newly coined term．It first emerged in November, 1999, when China launched its first unmanned“Shenzhou I”spacecraft．
At that lime, some English news media predicted that China would soon launch a manned space flight and created the word“taikonaut”for the Chinese astronauts．It was then borrowed by the Germans media．
But it was left out of mainstream dictionaries, such as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Cambridge Advanced English Learner’s Dictionary．
However, the launch of the“Shenzhou V”will most likely help boost its status since there is already a word referring specifically to Russian astronauts in the dictionary entry．
An astronaut of Russian(or the former Soviet Union)is called a“cosmonaut”, from the Russian“kosmonaut”．The word was derived from classical Greek：“kosmonaut”(universal)and“nautes”．One might argue that“cosmonaut”is a Russian variation on the earlier word“astronaut”．
On March 14,1995, US astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to ride into space on-board a Russian launch vehicle, arguably making him the first American cosmonaut．
And if this trend of coinage continues, more English variations for astronaut will appear as more countries are able to send their own astronauts into outer space, what would Western journalists call an astronaut from India or Africa?We’ll have to wait to see．
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