輝瑞-拜恩泰科新冠疫苗日前正式獲批上市，它的商品名Comirnaty也進入了大眾的視野。這個詞要怎么發音呢？為什么藥名都這么怪？其實這是有原因的。

The Food and Drug Administration issued full authorization Monday for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Soon, millions of Americans will face a confusing, difficult task: How in the heck do you pronounce Comirnaty?

美國食品藥物管理局本周一（8月23日）正式批準輝瑞-拜恩泰科新冠疫苗上市。很快，數百萬美國人將面臨一個令人困惑的難題：Comirnaty這個詞到底要怎么發音呢？

That's the brand name for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It's pronounced "co-MER-na-tee" according to Scott Piergrossi, president of creative for the Brand Institute, which crafted the name.

Comirnaty（中文名稱為復必泰）是輝瑞--拜恩泰科新冠疫苗的商品名。據品牌研究所創意總監斯科特·皮爾格羅西介紹，這個詞的讀音是“co-MER-na-tee”。

It's a little easier to say than BNT162b2, the research name of the vaccine while it was first being studied, but not much.

這比該疫苗在最初研究階段使用的名稱BNT162b2發音更容易一點，但是也好不到哪去。

Why Comirnaty?

為什么要采用Comirnaty這個名稱呢？

According to the companies, it "represents a combination of the terms COVID-19, mRNA, community, and immunity."

據這兩家公司稱，Comirnaty一詞“綜合了新型冠狀病毒肺炎的正式名稱COVID-19、信使核糖核酸mRNA、群體community和免疫力immunity這幾個詞”。

我們來分解說明一下：

co = COVID-19 (which in turn stands for COronaVIrus Disease 2019, the year it was discovered)

前兩個字母co代表COVID-19，即新型冠狀病毒肺炎2019，2019年是新冠病毒被發現的年份。

mirna = mRNA, the snippets of genetic code that tell cells to build proteins. In this case, the proteins on the COVID-19 spike protein

中間的mirna 指代的是mRNA，讓細胞合成蛋白質的遺傳密碼片段，在這里蛋白質指的是新冠病毒纖突蛋白。

ty = some combination of community and immunity.

結尾處的ty就是community（群體）和immunity（免疫力）的組合

"That's what I love about Comirnaty, it hits so many of the key points we were trying to convey," Piergrossi said.

皮爾格羅西說：“這就是我喜歡Comirnaty這個詞的原因，它包含了我們想傳達的許多要點。”

If you don't like Comirnaty, and BNT162b2 doesn't trip off your tongue, you can always try tozinameran.

如果你不喜歡Comirnaty，又覺得BNT162b2太難念，你也可以試試tozinameran這個詞。

Yeah, we thought not.

還是算了吧。這也夠拗口的。

But in case you want to, that one's pronounced "toe-zuh-NAH-mer-an."

萬一你對tozinameran感興趣，這里可以告訴你，它的發音是“toe-zuh-NAH-mer-an”。

That's the generic name for Comirnaty. Like all pharmaceutical generic names overseen by the World Health Organization, it had to be crafted according to strict nomenclature rules.

Tozinameran是Comirnaty的通用名稱。和世界衛生組織監管的其他所有藥品通用名稱一樣，這款疫苗必須按照嚴格的命名法來命名。

Generic drug or vaccine names come in two parts. The first part is something the drug company gets to make up, in this case "tozina."

藥物或疫苗的通用名稱分為兩部分。第一部分是制藥公司起的名字，在本詞中指的是tozina這部分。

"It's got to be a 'blank canvas,'" Piergrossi said. "WHO requests that the prefix be meaningless. It can't be a marketing tool."

皮爾格羅西說：“這部分必須是‘空白畫布’。世衛組織要求前綴不能有意義，不能作為營銷工具。”

The suffix "meran" is used for mRNA vaccines, just as "caine" is the suffix for local anesthetics and "ast" is for anti-asthma drugs.

后綴meran 指代的是mRNA疫苗，類似的還有，地方麻醉藥名會用caine作為后綴，而ast是抗哮喘藥物名的后綴。

The Brand Institute began working on names for the vaccine in April 2020, when its German office contacted BioNTech, which is based there. (BioNTech is pronounced Bye-ON-tech, not Bye-oh-N-tech.)

2020年4月，品牌研究所德國辦事處聯系了總部位于德國的拜恩泰科公司，自那以后該研究所就開始思考如何給這一疫苗命名。（BioNTech的發音是Bye-ON-tech，不是Bye-oh-N-tech）。

Coming up with pharmaceutical names involves lots of money and database searches, Piergrossi said.

皮爾格羅西說：“藥物的命名過程要花很多錢，還要做大量的數據庫搜索工作。”

"We're contending against hundreds of thousands of existing names, and any new brand name has to be dissimilar from everything else in those databases," he said.

他說：“我們是在和現有的無數名稱對陣，任何一個新名稱都必須不同于數據庫中的任何現有名稱。”

There are lots of considerations, including screening for name similarities, intellectual property and internet domain availability.

要考量的因素很多，包括篩查相似的名稱、知識產權以及互聯網域名的可用性。

When a list of finalists is created, a cultural review is done.

在制定出候選名單后，還要進行文化審查。

"We do a linguistic screen in over 40 languages to make sure there's nothing offensive or misleading," Piergrossi said. "It's a disaster check, to make sure you're not going to have any embarrassing situations."

皮爾格羅西說：“我們會在40多種語言中做文化審查，確保這個詞沒有冒犯性含義或容易產生歧義。這也是‘排雷’檢查，確保這個詞不會讓人陷入尷尬的境地。”

More COVID-19 vaccines are in the regulatory pipeline, so more tongue-twister names are coming.

還有更多新冠疫苗正在走審批流程，所以接下來我們還會接觸到更多拗口的名稱。

The brand name of the Moderna vaccine is slated to be Spikevax, according to Piergrossi. The AstraZeneca vaccine's is Vaxzervia.

據皮爾格羅西透露，莫德納疫苗的商品名將會是Spikevax，而阿斯利康疫苗的商品名則是Vaxzervia。

"There is a certain whimsical nature to pharmaceutical names," Piergrossi said.

皮爾格羅西說：“這些藥名總是有點怪怪的。”

英文來源：今日美國

翻譯&編輯：丹妮