Dynadot

information The Origin of Chips: Why Do We Use This Term?

Spaceship Spaceship
It's a term that has been frequently used by domain investors in the past few months, but what does it mean, why do we use this term, and what does it describe?

"Chip" is an abbreviation of "Chinese Premium." It describes a domain name that can be considered premium to a Chinese company or investor. Chips typically describe valuable domain names that are short and contain only premium letters, known as initials, which exclude the letters a, e, i, o, u or v.

Although the term was initially used in relation to four-letter .COM domain names, it can be used to describe numeric domains without a 0 or 4 and other categories such as five-letter .COM's with certain patterns.

@Tim Schoon, a domain investor and owner of PEJ.com Private Equity and Brokerage is credited with first using the term Chips to describe domain names. He first commented on why he thought the term had become so popular:
The popularity is mostly thanks to Giuseppe Graziano: he started mentioning the word in his newsletter and on interviews and it quickly took off after that.
For those who don't know, Giuseppe Graziano is a domain name broker who produced an excellent guide to investing in four-letter .COM domains, which is available to read here. His newsletter is also very informative and full of useful pieces of advice.


Tim went on to describe how he started to use the term Chips to describe Chinese Premium domains in May 2015:
The term 'Chips' was born while I was talking on Skype to a good domainer friend, Daniel Lakey, back in May this year. We were talking about the growing interest on 'Chinese Premiums', which he started to abbreviate to Chi Prems." I went one step further and called them Chips.


The term Chip is also a very common word in the world of gambling. Gaming chips are used in many forms of gambling to represent a specific monetary value. Tim describes how the term Chips describes Chinese Premium domain investments perfectly for a number of reasons:
I think the name (unintentionally) fits really well on multiple levels. For example, some investors are using chips as a way to store funds outside of the monetary system, much like chips in a casino. They can be easily traded and are easy to exchange for cash in any currency. Chips is now used for pretty much any type of domain that is considered 'premium' by Chinese standards.


Chip is a phrase that was initially popular when describing a four-letter domain name, but has started to become a regular description for many categories of domain name. As a word that appears very often on NamePros and around the industry, I think it's interesting to see where this came from, and why we use it. It is certainly more convenient than typing out "Chinese Premium(s)" multiple times in a paragraph or sales listing.

The unintentional similarity between a casino chip and a Chip domain is also very interesting to note - both can be traded for cash and both can be used to take a gamble in the hope of making more money!
 
35
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
We also use it because we are lazy typers. We=Average message board users.
 
3
•••
0
•••
0
•••
First time I've heard of that term. Thanks for sharing :)
 
3
•••
@Domain Shane I think I've seen Aaron use it once on your blog... ;)
 
1
•••
I am pretty sure a particular NP member started using it months ago. I don't like the term at all. Chinese don't use it and I think it's somewhat distasteful. The correct term is shengmu.
 
1
•••
I am pretty sure a particular NP member started using it months ago. I don't like the term at all. Chinese don't use it and I think it's somewhat distasteful. The correct term is shengmu.

We're American and lazy brother. Sad but true.
 
2
•••
We're American and lazy brother. Sad but true.
We don't need to be ignorant. Things like this are part of the reason America is looked down upon by other countries.
 
0
•••
+1

WeChips = Western Chinese Premium

:xf.grin:
 
1
•••
Why is 'v' included (with a,e,i,o, and u which are proper vowels and sometimes y if i remember correctly) .
Y is also not listed in OP, just curious

from search on google, it says
V is not a vowel. A;E;I;O;U; & Y are the English vowels, although Y can also behave as a consonant when it is at the beginning of a word
 
0
•••
2
•••
Why not just call them $$$$$? :)
 
1
•••
Soon to be discarded and replaced by a more widely applicable term: Chumps.
 
4
•••
0
•••
I am pretty sure a particular NP member started using it months ago. I don't like the term at all. Chinese don't use it and I think it's somewhat distasteful. The correct term is shengmu.
I know all 3: Chips, shengmu and initial.
No difference, really, as long as everyone understand, what domains we talking about.
 
1
•••
It's a great, casual term for it imo
 
0
•••
No one is using Chips to denote the Chinese, just their buying preferences and if anything it's flattering to them, the western world finally cares enough to recognize what they like.
 
1
•••
Why is 'v' included (with a,e,i,o, and u which are proper vowels and sometimes y if i remember correctly) .
Y is also not listed in OP, just curious

from search on google, it says
V is not a vowel. A;E;I;O;U; & Y are the English vowels, although Y can also behave as a consonant when it is at the beginning of a word


Because no chinese words starts with the V sound, no hanyupinyin spelling of any chinese words starts with "i" and "u"
 
0
•••
Back