Yao Nation gets news: It's Amy!

Chinese basketball player Yao Ming (second left) attends the opening ceremony yesterday of a primary school he funded in Guangyuan, Sichuan Province.

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THE English name of basketball star Yao Ming's daughter has come to light, thanks to an accidental disclosure by Yao's teammate, Shane Battier.

It's "Amy."

Battier, a forward on NBA's Houston Rockets and also a good friend of Yao, blurted out the secret yesterday when an interviewer asked him how he shared the experience of being a father with Yao.

Battier said he still has no idea about the girl's Chinese name because Yao and his wife Ye Li didn't reveal it.

Battier joked that he wanted his son to marry Yao's daughter but he didn't know whether Yao liked this idea or not.

In previous interviews, the couple have withheld the girl's name since her birth in May.

The public only knew that the girl's nickname is "YY," a combination of the initial letter "Y" of the couple's surnames -- a secret revealed by Miao Lijie, a former teammate and close friend of Ye Li.

Yao has just finished a three-day charity tour in Taiwan to raise money for his Yao Foundation, and still kept silence about the girl's name.

Her name, future height and her nationality (she was born in the US) have all elicited intense fan interest.

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