biànzhǒng

biànzhǒng (biàn·zhǒng changed · kind; type; variety → [mutation; variant; variety] 变种 變種) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[Note: Tap/click on a Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to reveal its “flashcard”, tap/click on a “flashcard” or its Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) expression to hide the “flashcard”.]

As of this writing, deep in the year 2021, the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, to say the least, on people’s minds now for a while. So, it would be good to be able to refer to things related to it in Mandarin when speaking to people in the Mandarin field, or when speaking to our brothers and sisters in the truth.

An electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19
 NIAID

A Variety of Mandarin Expressions for “Variant”

My research has turned up a variety of Mandarin expressions that appear to correspond with the English word “variant”, as in “the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19”. To get a rough idea of how commonly used these expressions are compared to each other, I decided to do a little experiment and compare some Google search results involving these expressions.

biànzhǒng (biàn·zhǒng changed · kind; type; variety → [mutation; variant; variety] 变种 變種)

Search Terms	Google Results Approx. No.
covid 变种	4,570,000
"delta变种"	3,240,000

biàntǐ (biàn·tǐ changed · {body → [form]} → [variant; variation; variety] 变体 變體)

Search Terms	Google Results Approx. No.
covid 变体	22,100,000
"delta变体"	215,000

biànyì bìngdú zhū ((biàn·yì changed · {to be different} 变异 變異) (bìng·dú disease · poison → [virus] 病毒) (zhū {trunk of a tree} → [strain] 株) → [virus strain/variant])

Search Terms	Google Results Approx. No.
covid 变异病毒株	2,350,000
"delta变异病毒株"	83,600

biànyì dúzhū ((biàn·yì changed · {to be different} 变异 變異) (dú·zhū {poison → [virus]} · {trunk of a tree → [strain]} 毒株) → [virus strain/variant])

Search Terms	Google Results Approx. No.
covid 变异毒株	974,000
"delta变异毒株"	507,000

biànyì zhū ((biàn·yì changed · {to be different} 变异 變異) (zhū {trunk of a tree → [strain]} 株) → [(virus) strain/variant])

Search Terms	Google Results Approx. No.
covid 变异株	3,210,000
"delta变异株"	1,730,000

bìngdú zhū ((bìng·dú disease · poison → [virus] 病毒) (zhū {trunk of a tree → [strain]} 株) → [virus strain/variant])

Search Terms	Google Results Approx. No.
covid 病毒株	4,940,000
"delta病毒株"	245,000

dúzhū (dú·zhū {poison; toxin → [virus]} · {trunk of a tree → [strain]} → [virus strain] 毒株)

Search Terms	Google Results Approx. No.
covid 毒株	3,380,000
"delta毒株"	408,000

Of the Mandarin expressions listed above, it seems that this week’s MEotW, “biànzhǒng (biàn·zhǒng changed · kind; type; variety → [mutation; variant; variety] 变种 變種)”, is the one most commonly used on the web at this time to correspond with the English word “variant” when referring to variants of the virus that causes COVID-19. (Note that the results above that are for the search terms in quotation marks, e.g. "delta变种", are the best ones to compare to determine this, since the quotation marks tell Google to look for the exact sequences of characters that are inside the quotation marks.)

By the Way…

Here are some other things I noticed as well:

• It is common for English words like “COVID” and “Delta” to appear in texts that are mainly made up of Chinese characters, even though Mandarin expressions that correspond with these English words do exist.
• Some Mandarin expressions that are longer may be more technically accurate or informative, but often, shorter expressions will be used more, because of convenience.
• Searching for Simplified Chinese characters on Google will sometimes return results that use those characters’ Traditional counterparts, and vice versa.