Rare, in fact, is the newsreader who gets an unfamiliar name right

It is a bit unfair to dismiss a part-time newsreader on Doordarshan for thinking Xi stood for the Roman numeral eleven rather than the family name of the visiting President of China. Can a nation of cricket lovers be blamed for thinking the letters X and I after the word President could be anything other than shorthand for a cricket team? Besides, considering the previous Pope was the 16th Benedict — even if he put the XVI after his name — a groggy graveyard-shift newsreader could assume that a civilisation as ancient as China has a president who is the eleventh Jinping in an illustrious line of Jinpings. Since the Chinese put their family names first, the news reader could well have surmised that they do the same with numerals.

Indeed, the Chinese Prime Minister could well be 51 Keqiang, but we shall give future DD anchors some leeway on that. And it remains to be seen what Chinese newscasters do with the words President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, if and when the Indian dignitaries head off to Beijing, as newscasters the world over are not known for their ability to pronounce ‘complicated’ names flawlessly. Indian newsreaders are up to global standards on that count, and extend the courtesy to unfamiliar Indian names as well, so President Xi should not feel chagrined.