Aborigines, whirling water but definitely not flowers

A great many explanations are given for the origin of the name Hualien (花蓮, "flower lotus"), including wishful thinking, such that the nearbycliffs where covered by joined(連) flowers.

Most reliable seems to be that it was called HuaLen (洄瀾,“whirling waves”) by Hoklo-speaking settlers. This is said to be a description of the swirling back of water in the Hualien River (花蓮溪) as it met the ocean.

There is also another early name of GeeLai (奇萊, and variants, QiLai in Mdn.), which Abe (安倍明義) says derived from the Amis Aboriginal name for the area, "Q Kirai" .

Some people claim 奇萊 was changed to "Hualien" during the period of Japanese rule (1895-1945) because the Japanese pronunciation sounds the same as a word for "detest".

But it seems that the change in names from 洄瀾 to the similar sounding (in Hoklo) 花蓮 dates from two decades before the Japanese, when Shen Bao-zhen (沈葆楨) petitioned the Qing court to make the change. Shen is closely tied to much of Hualien's early history because it was being explored and cleared for cultivation by Han Chinese during his stint in charge of Taiwan.