A great interview with Andy Chuang of Goodcharacters.com in Fresno, California. His company specializes in Chinese naming and linguistic evaluation. The interview was conducted by Steve Rivkin; here's an excerpt:

For example, Toshiba once had a commercial song in China that sang, “Toshiba, Toshiba…” However, it turned out that “to-shi-ba” sounded like “let's steal it” (tou-chu-ba) in Mandarin Chinese. People really made fun of it.

Fortunately, Toshiba is a Japanese name and its corresponding characters, Dong-Ji, means “the East” and “nobility.” Now Toshiba uses Dong-Ji more and is careful when using the pronunciation of “Toshiba.”

Some brand names travel more easily than others. Here are a few common war stories of brands that didn't fare so well abroad:

A food company named its giant burrito a BURRADA. Big mistake. The colloquial meaning of that word is "big mistake."

A leading brand of car de-icer in Finland will never make it in America. The brand name: SUPER PISS.