The book provides highlights on the key concepts and trends of evolution in History of Place Names in China, as one of the series of books of “China Classified Histories”.

This is a study of the Chinese city of Beijing in which I use "place names" as a means of understanding the changing geography of the city over its long history. Although place names have been widely studied from across a spectrum of disciplines, a study on the history of the process of naming places in China is still very limited in English literature. Moreover, place naming is not only a historical process but also geographical phenomena. Scholars have for long seemingly ignored the fact that people with different cultural backgrounds, living in different parts of the world, may name their places in different ways. In the USA, Martin Luther King streets may be seen all over the map, yet for all the worshiping of Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution, there is not a single street named after him in China. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to discover the character of Chinese place-names by using Beijing as the case. Beijing's place names are not just to help us find our way, but rich stories that reveal our di3fferent ways of understanding the locations. For studying the historical transformation of these understandings, I classify Beijing's place-names into scientific, humanistic and social constructionist ways of naming. In this way, we can classify the complicated and various place names into three intertwined parts: objects and numbers, histories and emotions, politics and ideologies. In details, I see Beijing's place names as chronologically representative of six distinctive understandings of the locations. (1) The cosmological-symbolic: a capital of a "huge unity in Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) (2) The Confucian ideological and urban-planner practical: the capital sat on the border in Ming dynasty (1368-1644); (3) The cosmological-symbolic vs. social-practical: the capital as adapted by Manchu dynasty (Qing dynasty 1644-1912); (4) The half-hearted modern in Republic of China (1912-1949); (5) The People's Republic of China: Marxist-Maoist phase (1950-1976); and (6) The People's Republic of China: post-Marxist, quasi-capitalist, neo-Confucianist phase (1976-present).

This book is dedicated to various aspects of contemporary Chinese place names, their structural and semantic features, as well as naming phenomena present in Chinese toponymy. The structural analysis deals with the division of placename words into generic and specific, and the classification of Chinese generics and specifics according to their morphological structure. The classification of toponyms as derivations from other words is also discussed. This study analyses the semantic content of toponyms, dealing with their meaning as proper names, and classifies them into nine main categories according to their origin. The study is based on a corpus of 1973 names of administrative units at the county and city level of 20 provinces of the People's Republic of China.

Since 1819, more than 6,200 place (street and village) names divided into more than 3,900 name groups were known in Singapore. Based on digitised historical newspapers, dated back to 1830, municipal records and Malay dictionaries, the origins, meanings and date of naming for many place names are uncovered. As part of Singapore history, place names known since 1936 are recorded in this book.Although place names are fairly static in nature, there have been more than 100 name changes. The naming trends transitioned from English to Malay and then back to English names. Discover that Toa Payoh was not named after a big swamp, Anderson Road was named before John Anderson, a former Governor, took up his job and many more new findings in this exciting book.This book is a complete listing of all place names since 1936, together with the most comprehensive annotations to date — a first in Singapore. It is also the only book of its kind that analyses naming trends. Information on the origins or date of naming was based on primary sources such as old maps, minutes of municipal meetings, Chinese books and digitised newspapers.

The crucial period of Chinese history, 220-960, falls naturally into contrasting phases. The first phase, also known as that of "early medieval China," is an age of political decentralization. Following the breakup of the Han empire, China was plunged into civil war and fragmentation and stayed divided for nearly four centuries. The second phase started in 589, during the Sui dynasty, when China was once again brought under a single government. Under the Sui, the bureaucracy was revitalized, the military strengthened, and the taxation system reformed. The fall of the Sui in 618 gave way to the even stronger Tang dynasty, which represents an apogee of traditional Chinese civilization. Inheriting all the great institutions developed under the Sui, the Tang made great achievements in poetry, painting, music, and architecture. The An Lushan rebellion, which also took place during Tang rule, brought about far-reaching changes in the socioeconomic, political, and military arenas. What transpired in the second half of the Tang and the ensuing Five Dynasties provided the foundation for the next age of late imperial China. The Historical Dictionary of Medieval China fills an urgent need for a standard reference tailored to the interest of Western academics and readers. The history of medieval China is related through the book's introductory essay, maps, a table of Dynastic Periods, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on key people, historical geography, arts, institutions, events, and other important terms.

Endymion Wilkinson's bestselling manual of Chinese history has long been an indispensable guide to all those interested in the civilization and history of China. In this latest edition, now in a bigger format, its scope has been dramatically enlarged by the addition of one million words of new text. Twelve years in the making, the new manual introduces students to different types of transmitted, excavated, and artifactual sources from prehistory to the twentieth century. It also examines the context in which the sources were produced, preserved, and received, the problems of research and interpretation associated with them, and the best, most up-to-date secondary works. Because the writing of history has always played a central role in Chinese politics and culture, special attention is devoted to the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese historiography.

"This book is a two-volume set that discusses the names of China, including the country's official titles throughout history, domestic self-names, and foreign names in ancient and modern times. Using interdisciplinary approaches from fields such as history, geography, ethnic studies, linguistics, psychology and toponymy, this two-volume set examines the origin and evolution of China's names throughout its more than 4,000-year history. The first volume examines the official names of the country given by the rulers or the government, including the names of the imperial dynasties, from the earliest Xia to the last Qing, and the title of the Republic of China, which symbolises a new era in national naming. The second volume explores the complex reasons for the emergence and evolution of self-names that were used domestically regardless of political regime change, such as Zhongguo, Zhonghua, Jiuzhou and Sihai. It also discusses the origin, development, use and popularity of foreign names for China, such as China, Serice, Taugas, Cathay and those associated with Han, Tang, the dragon and the lion. This book will appeal to both academic and general readers interested in Chinese history, Chinese historical geography and Chinese toponymy"--