Some Chinese Names

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 27, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 30.

Some Chinese Names.

So much of the current, daily news refers to Chinese geography, that the following definitions of proper names, from the Boston Transcript, are both interesting and instructive: “First, prefixes: Ta, as in Taku, means great, and siao, as in Siao-Ping-Thou, means small. Pei or pe, nan, tung, and si are respectively north, south, east, and west. Thus the Pei-Ho is the North River, etc. Shang and hai are upper and lower. Pai, hei, and whang are white, black, and yellow. Suffixes are more numerous and familiar. Kiang, ho, tchuan, ula, muren, and tohu, each and all mean river. Thus Yalu Kiang and Liao Ho are simply Yalu River and Liao River. Shui, kou, tshuan, khi, gol, and ussu are unfamiliar terms, meaning a brook or small river. Hu, nor, and omo mean lake, as in the well-known Lob Nor and Kossi Gol Po; tse and tien mean a small lake or swamp, or a town situated near such a place. Hai means sea; thus Whang-Hai is the Yellow Sea, Tung-Hai is the Eastern Sea, and Nan-Hai is the Southern Sea. Tao, and sometimes shan means island, but shan more often means a mountain range. Ling is a pass over a mountain range.”