Call me superstitious, but I actually put a lot of thought into choosing the ‘right’ business phone number for GOOD to GO. Considering the number’s sticking to me for at least a year, I wanted to pick something that is meaningful and memorable to me, and putting my old-school Cantonese mind to peace.
Incorporating the Brand Name
The first thing I considered was how to hide the name GOOD to GO into the number. Using the phone keypad method (yes, I’m a Millennial) would yield something like 4663-86-46, which looked like gibberish to me, not to mention the presence of two 4’s. As you might be aware, 4 is a number generally avoided in Chinese culture because of its similar pronunciation to ‘death’ (死). So that’s a no-go.
Read more: Why Cantonese People Avoid 4 and 7
I then turned to leetspeak and textese, the practice of using Arabic numbers and symbols to replace English alphabets. The resulting 6004-70-60 looks much easier on the eyes, but there was a problem – it was quite expensive to customise all eight digits of your phone number in Hong Kong, and I was certainly not keen on investing that much for occasional calls.
And that’s when I abbreviated GOOD to GO into G2G, which gave me a stylish and affordable ‘626’. Now that I have this combination, I could check with local telecom operators for a list of potential phone numbers. Ultimately, 626-3-1459 was the one I chose.
But I Thought You Said to Avoid 4?
Now that’s my favourite part! The avoidance of numeral 4 is a rule of thumb, but exceptions are made when you factor in its combination with other numbers. While having ties with ‘death’, 4 is also correlated with ‘世‘, which can be translated into ‘lifetime’. In particular, the combination 1459 sounds quite similar to ‘a lifetime without worry’ (一世唔憂). For those interested in Cantonese romanisation, that’s yat1-sei3-ng5-gau2 versus yat1-sai3-m4-yau1. Pretty close, right?
Now that leaves ‘3’ as a connector. In local belief, 3 is associated with ‘life’ or ‘growth’ (生), which is neutral to generic phone numbers, but beneficial to businesses seeking healthy growth. So the pieces fall together nicely. On paper at least.
And Now for More Superstition
Of course, I didn’t stop there. How could I confirm the number without consulting fortune-telling? There are many methods to divine the suitability of phone numbers. One of the simpler ones is to measure the ‘five elements’ (五行) [internal link] of the number and determine if it’s compatible to your birth fate. Without going into all the mumbo jumbo, this was what I grabbed off a fortune-telling website.
The rule of thumb is to find a number which the five elements are complementary to that of your birth fate. For instance, I’m low on metal (金), wood (木) and water (水) at birth, while fire (火) and earth (土) are much more abundant. Incidentally, the number 62631459 is rich on metal and water. Combined, the phone number is supposed to balance out my impulse and stubbornness by introducing confidence and wisdom. The eagle-eyed you might ask: how about the aspect of wood? That’s not balanced at all! Well, no one’s perfect, I guess.