What's in a name?

[Javaness2]

2nd Quzhou International Friendly Children Amateur Weiqi Invitational Tournament 2024 - if you are a native speaker of the King's English, or indeed any other form that you feel like - then this tournament's name probably feels wrong. How though, how indeed should it be written.
For a bonus, give the rules which dictate its correct name.

[jts]

It's a little bit of an unusual concept, but it may really be intended as "International Child-Friendly Amateur Invitational Weiqi Tournament"... there is in fact a UN/Unicef program pushing the concept of child-friendly cities, and this concept has been central to Quzhou's urban development planning. So their annual children's festival is called the International Child-Friendly Exchange. And the amateur invitational weiqi tournament that is part of that festival is therefore the... ________

[jlt]

Is it a tournament only for children, or a child-friendly tournament which is open to adults as well?

[Javaness2]

Quzhou International Friendly Children Amateur Weiqi Invitational Tournament
It is a team competition for children. There were 8 teams in all.

I went for 'Quzhou International Invitational Amateur Friendly Children's Weiqi Tournament' but haven't checked the likes of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective ... ve_phrases to see if I am correct

[EricBackus]

Is it a tournament only for children, or a child-friendly tournament which is open to adults as well?

Clearly, it is a tournament only for friendly children. No grumps allowed!

[gennan]

I'm not a native English speaker.

Due to a lack of grammatical inflexion in English, you probably need to consider word order to convey which adjective applies to which noun.

"Quzhou International Friendly Children Amateur Weiqi Invitational Tournament"

This word order suggests that "friendly" applies to "children". I assume the intention is that it applies to "tournament".

It seems a bit excessive to use 7 modifiers. But if this can't be helped, I'd probably use the word order "Quzhou International Weiqi Amateur Children Invitational Friendly Tournament" to minimise confusion.

[jts]

I can't imagine that it really matters, but I don't think you guys are grasping that the umbrella festival/whatever, of which the weiqi tournament is a small part, is the "International Child-Friendly Exchange", referencing efforts to make the city of Quzhou more child-friendly. This is "child-friendly" in the colloquial sense that we say safer streets, walkability, more play areas, less pollution make a city more "child-friendly". Whether the children themselves are friendly has nothing to do with this particular Unicef initiative (and I don't know whether the Chinese term is a calque, but the city has documents and press releases online explaining the connection).

So however you want to torture the title of this poor tournament, the phrase "International Child-Friendly" should appear as a unit, since it refers to the name of the larger event, not to desirable attributes of tournament participants.

[xela]

...Due to a lack of grammatical inflexion in English...

We can sometimes compensate for that with word order and sentence structure. I think "Quzhou International Friendly Weiqi Tournament for Children" would be a better name. (I think "amateur" isn't necessary: that should be clear enough from the combination of "friendly" and "children". And yes, I left out "invitational". Other sports have invitational tournaments without cramming that term into an 8-word name.)