维基百科 : wéijībǎike - wikipedia

维基百科 (wéijībǎike) is "Wikipedia". The first part 维基 is a phonetic translation, literally it means something like "tie together (or support) the basis or foundation".

百科 is short for 百科全书 (bǎikē quánshǔ) "encyclopedia". Literally "hundred section (or branch of study) whole book", but 百 is often used for a large assortment of things, as in 百货大楼 (bǎihuòdàlóu ) "hundred commodity large building" meaning "department store" or the well known 老百姓 (laobǎixìng) "old hundred names" meaning "the common people".

The Chinese character on the Wikipedia logo appears to be the obscure 袓 (jǔ, "clothes" radical 145, 10 strokes Uncode 8893) although maybe it's supposed to be the more common 祖 (zǔ, "spirit" radical 113, 9 strokes, Uncode 7956), meaning "ancestors" or "ancestral tomb". There's definately been a lot of discussion of this. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for the particular character, the designer claims to have been trying to pick characters with a "W" sound.

• http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/首页