Saturday 28 March 2009

Mr. Su, Mr. Roo and Mr. National Surname




Suao (蘇澳) is an unusual example of a Taiwan place name that derives from a person, a Mr. Su (蘇) who brought a group of Han Chinese to this area of the east coast to cultivate land. So 蘇澳 is Su's Bay.

But there are few similar examples.

Even street names are rarely named for people, though Chaing Kai-shek gets a mention in pretty much every city, town and village with 中正 (ZhongZheng) Road, as does Sun Yat-sen with both 中山 (ZhongShan) and 逸仙 (YiXian) roads. In Taipei there are also Lin Sen (林森) and Yen Ping (延平; for Zheng Cheng-gong) roads.


Interestingly, a few foreigners also get a mention, such as 麥帥橋 (MacArthur Bridge) and 羅斯福路 (Roosevelt Road).

Unfortunately for this survey of people's-names-to-place-names, Luodong (羅東) up the road from Suao does not mean Mr. Luo's East, but is the transliteration into Taiwanese of the local Aboriginal word for monkey, perhaps because of a local rock that looked like a monkey [though that sounds very Han Chinese to me], or perhaps because many monkeys lived in this area.

Similarly, Guoxing (國姓) Township in Nantou County apparently has nothing to do with Koxinga (國姓爺; Lord of the National Surname, a.k.a. Zheng Cheng-gong), but was a corruption from Guosheng (國勝; "National Victory"), which may be even more homophonic in Taiwanese.

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