Beijing is from pinyin Běijīng, which is romanized from 北京, the Chinese name for this city.
The pinyin system of transliteration was approved by the Chinese government in 1958, but little used until 1979. It was gradually adopted by various news organizations, governments, and international agencies over the next decade.
The Chinese characters 北 ("north") and 京 ("capital") together mean the "Northern Capital". The name was first used during the reign of the Ming dynasty's Yongle Emperor, who made his northern fief a second capital, along with Nanjing (南京, the "Southern Capital"), in 1403 after successfully dethroning his nephew during the Jingnan Campaign. The name was restored in 1949 at the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Portugal was the first European country to contact China in modern times. In Portuguese, the city is called Pequim. This name appeared in the letters of Francis Xavier in 1552. It transferred to English as "Pekin" and to French as Pékin.
Jesuit missionary Martino Martini used "Peking" in De bello Tartarico historia (The Tartary [Manchu] War) (1654) and Novus Atlas Sinensis (New Atlas of China) (1655). In 1665, Martini's work was reissued as part of Atlas Maior (great atlas), a much-praised atlas by Dutch publisher Joan Blaeu.
In English, both "Pekin" and "Peking" remained common until the 1890s, when the Imperial Post Office adopted Peking.
Beginning in 1979, the Chinese government encouraged use of pinyin. The New York Times adopted "Beijing" in 1986, with all major American media soon following. Elsewhere in the Anglosphere, the BBC switched in 1990. "Peking" is still employed in terms such as "Pekingese", "Peking duck", "Peking Man" and various others, as well as being retained in the name of Peking University.
Year | City Name | Dynasty | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
c. 1045 BC | City of Ji 薊城 | Zhou, Warring States | |
221 BC | Qin | ||
106 BC - 318 AD | City of Ji Youzhou 幽州 | Han, Wei, Western Jin (晉) | |
319 | Later Zhao | ||
350 | Eastern Jin (晉) | ||
352–57 | Former Yan | ||
370 | Former Qin | ||
385 | Later Yan | ||
397 | Northern Dynasties | ||
607 | Zhuojun 涿郡 | Sui | |
616 | Youzhou | Tang | |
742 | Fanyang 范阳 | ||
759 | Yanjing 燕京 | ||
765 | Youzhou | ||
907 | Later Liang | ||
911 | Yan (Five Dynasties) | ||
913 | Later Liang | ||
923 | Later Tang | ||
936 | Later Jin | ||
938 | Nanjing 南京 | Liao | |
1122 | Northern Liao | ||
Yanjing | Jin (金) | ||
1122 | |||
1123 | Yanshan 燕山 | Song | |
1125 | Yanjing | Jin (金) | |
1151 | Zhongdu 中都 | ||
1215 | Yanjing | Yuan | |
1271 | Dadu 大都 | ||
1368 | Beiping 北平 | Ming | |
1403 | Beijing 北京 | ||
1420 | |||
1644 | Qing | ||
1912 | Republic of China | ||
1928 | Beiping | ||
1937 | Beijing | Provisional Government of the Republic of China | |
1940 | Beiping | Republic of China | |
1949– present | Beijing | People's Republic of China | |
Capital of regional dynasty or kingdom Capital of China |
The city has had many other names. The chronological list below sets out both the names of the city itself, and, in earlier times, the names of the administrative entities covering the city today.
In Chinese, the abbreviation of Beijing is its second character 京 ("Capital"). This is employed, for example, as the prefix on all Beijing-issued license plates.
In the Latin alphabet, the official abbreviation are the two initials of the region's characters: BJ.
Beijing Capital International Airport's IATA code is PEK, based on the previous romanization, Peking.
In addition to Nanjing, several other East Asian and Southeast Asian cities have similar names in Chinese characters despite appearing dissimilar in English transliteration. The most prominent is Tokyo, Japan, whose Han script name is written 東京 (Dongjing, or "Eastern Capital"). 東京 was also a former name of Hanoi (as Đông Kinh or "Tonkin") in Vietnam during the Later Lê dynasty. A former name of Seoul in South Korea was Gyeongseong, written in Han script as 京城 or "Capital City". Kyoto in Japan still bears the similar-meaning characters 京都: the character "都", du in Chinese, can also mean "capital".
The history of China since the Tang dynasty has also been full of secondary capitals with directional names. Under the Tang, these were Beidu ("north capital", at Taiyuan in Shanxi); Nandu ("south capital", first, Chengdu in Sichuan and, later, Jiangling in Hubei); Dongdu ("east capital", Luoyang in Henan); and Xidu ("west capital", Fengxiang in Shaanxi).
There were two previous Beijings: one, the northern capital of the Northern Song at modern Daming in Hebei; the other, the northern capital of the Jurchen Jin located at Ningcheng in Inner Mongolia.
The Nanjing of the Northern Song was located at Shangqiu in Henan. The Jurchen Jin located theirs at Kaifeng,) which had been the Northern Song's "Dongjing". The Jurchen Jin also had a Dongjing ("Eastern Capital"), which was, however, located at Liaoyang in Liaoning. Apart from these, there were two Xijings (西京, "Western Capital"): one was the "Western Capital" of the Northern Song dynasty, located at Luoyang; the other was held by the Liao and Jurchen Jin at Datong. Liaoyang was the Zhongjing (中京, "Central Capital") of the Liao dynasty and, finally, another Zhongdu ("Central Capital") was planned but never completed. It was the proposed capital of the Ming dynasty mooted by the Hongwu Emperor in the 14th century, to be located on the site of his destroyed childhood village of Zhongli (鍾離), now Fengyang in Anhui.
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