Talk:Yangtze

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The length, headwater on the map and source elevation are not up to date. The Yangtze river map here shows a headwater similar to the official atlas of China published before 1980s. However, based on a field study in early 1980s by China, the Tuotuo river is found to be longest headwater of Yangtze river. The elevation of the source of Tuotuo river -- Geladangdong is above 6600m. From Geladangdong to Shanghai, Yangtze river has a length of 6300km. Dangqu is now treated as another headwater of Yangtze river. Although shorter, Dangqu has more annual discharge than Tuotuo river has. Dangqu and Tuotuo joint together and form the Tongtian river.

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Shouldn't 'Huai He' be 'Huang He'? (anon)

No- Huai He is a separate river, further south. Markalexander100 03:04, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

From the Village Pump

I've just noticed that the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) is literally the "long river" and that the Huang He is literally the "yellow river". Since they seem to share no character in common, are there multiple Chinese characters that are all best translated as river in English or are we just fudging the translations somewhat... in which case the qualification of said translations as "literal" is inappropiate. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:14, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Jiang in general, is bigger than He. (At least, when it enters the ocean.) The problem is that in these two particular instances, historical naming takes precedence. Huang He was settled around Xi'an and Xiangyang (btw, why does Xi'an have that '?) at which point the river is not quite wide enough to be called a Jiang. On the other hand, the Yangtze was settled more in the east (Shanghai area), where it was wider. So it rated a Jiang. At least, that's how it was explained to me. -Vina 06:07, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Frigoris 13:11, 23 April 2006 (UTC) Even many native Chinese,including me, feel puzzled at the difference between "Jiang" and "He". In acient China, neither of the characters appeared in many rivers' names (at that time, a common word for "River" was "Shui", which means "water" in comtemporary Chinese)."Jiang" used to mean only what we call "The Yangtze River" now, and "He" the Huang He. However, in modern Chinese both characters are used as suffixes denoting the name of a river. Personally, I think "Jiang" is more frequently used in Northeast and South China as a name suffix, while "He" in Central and North China. Moreover, when not used as part of a river's name, the word "he" (note I use the lower case) is more frequent than "jiang". Sometimes people consider "jiang" to have more emotional implications relating to the sense of "great", "open" or "source of life".(too hard to say in English :-P). An interesting phenomenon is that almost all the Chinese translations of European or American river names use "He" rather than "Jiang", e.g. the river Rhine is 莱茵河 (He) in Chinese, not "莱茵江".[reply]

BTW, Xi'an's ' shows that it's a two syllable name. Xian would be one syllable (approximately "syen"). Markalexander100 01:48, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

'Xian' is how the locals pronounce it :)

Bathrobe 08:29, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This should be the Yangtse in English, not the Chang Jiang

It is entirely inappropriate to call this the Chang Jiang. To say it is 'also called the Yangtse River' is a little ingenuous. It is almost always called the Yangtse River in English. I do not know who made the judgement that this river should be renamed in English but it is definitely wrong in a reference work for English speakers. It would be more appropriate to put it under the entry for 'Yangtse River' and note that the river is known in Chinese as 'Chang Jiang'.

I realise that the naming of places can be contentious, but can the person who made this decision justify the aggressive 'nativisation' (indeed, proselytisation) of this name in complete disregard of established usage? It is not as though Chang Jiang is common usage even now.

......................

I notice that this comment has attracted no response whatsoever. I have checked out the discussion on Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese), and no principled basis is given for adopting Chang Jiang in preference to Yangtze, other than the editor's own personal bias (i.e., dogmatic assertion). I refer you to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(use_English) for this comment:

'The Wikipedia page on Convention: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form.'

Since the name Chang Jiang is not more commonly used in English, it should not be the title of the article. Given the Be bold policy of Wikipedia, I would be within my rights to simply go in and change it. I am awaiting a reasonable response before I do so, though. Bathrobe

I've no objection to your changing it, but you would have to fix all the links to this page as well [1]. Enjoy. Mark ¹ 06:44, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I too support this change. In an ideal world we would move away from this more common English form, toward the most common Chinese form, Changjiang or Chang Jiang, but this prescriptive notion is not consistent with the Wikipedia naming convention. Having both together, with the recognizable Yangtze, Yangtse or Yangzi, in that order of preference, serves better to both follow the Wiki convention and educate English speakers at the same time to the currently more common Chinese form. We would not name the page on Confucius "Kongfuzi" as the primary name, now, would we? Native Chinese speakers, please understand that this is the English Wiki, which must be accessible to English speakers. I support your desire to educate English speakers as to the correct modern Chinese forms, but this must remain secondary to the goals of accessibility and intelligibility of the information, which for the time being requires the anglicized form to predominate. Dragonbones 04:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What would you change it to, though? Yangtse or Yangtze? Google hits suggest the "Z" form is more popular. But I wonder if this is one of those British vs. American things.

Good question. In a search of English-language pages only, 'Yangtze' seems to be the overwhelming favourite (if you trust Google). Many instances of 'Yangtse' could be from European languages. Bathrobe

Ditto, good question. Yangtze and Yangtse are traditional, while Yangzi is the correct modern Hanyu Pinyin for this pronunciation. I recommend providing all three at *one* point in the article, but using Yangtze throughout as the preferred form. Dragonbones 04:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the "S" form, for some reason there are two identical versions (both redirects), which means the move will fail and admin intervention is needed. The "Z" form has only one version in the edit history and could be moved to. -- Curps 07:09, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I notice that Yangtse/Yangtze and everything connected with it is in a mess. For instance, Yangtze River Delta is there and starts out with the words 'Yangzi Delta', but no Chang Jiang Delta :) There is Jiangnan (a redirect) and Jiang Nan which supposedly 'refers to the southern part of the lowest reaches of the Yangtze River, including the southern part of the Yangtze Delta'. Any changes are going to need some thought. I've also noticed that quite a few dictionaries (e.g. Websters) use Chang Jiang. It is quite possible that Chang Jiang is the wave of the future, but for the moment these dictionaries appear to be trying to lead the change, not record actual usage. If 'Yangtze River' is made the main article, all this will have to be noted accordingly, i.e., a note will have to be inserted saying that there is an increasing trend to use Chang Jiang in preference to Yangtze River. I still feel, however, that the predominant usage is 'Yangtze River', and until 'Chang Jiang' becomes the norm Wikipedia should not take it upon itself to dictate usage to the world. Bathrobe

I've now changed Chang Jiang to Yangtze River, and all links to it. In doing so I've retained Chang Jiang in parentheses at many locations, which I feel is only fair. I've also indicated at the main article that Chang Jiang is found on many maps. I feel that I've been relatively fair to the 'Chang Jiang lobby'.

Incidentally, I found in the course of fixing links etc. that Yangtze River is definitely the most popular usage. Some people use Yangzi, possibly out of a feeling that the pinyin spelling should be respected. I found only a small number of contributors habitually using Chang Jiang but they are responsible for quite a few articles.

Bathrobe 08:22, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is confusing to have two names for the same river: Chang Jiang(Long River) and Yangtze/Yangzi/Yangtse River.

If you're in China as a tourist and you say "Yangtze River" to someone, he or she most probably wouldn't understand you. However, if you say Long River or Chang Jiang, you could be understood. If you say Peking, people wouldn't know you're saying Beijing, there is no "k" in that name by Chinese pronounciation. Today's China is not yesterday's China. Millions of young people can never know what you mean by Yangtze and Peking. I guess the choice is between conforming to the old Western way of pronounciation or to today's Chinese usage and standardization. The choice influences the ability to communicate with one another. (unsigned comment from User:Myfriend on 11 July)

'Millions of young people can never know what you mean by Yangtze and Peking.' How sure are you of this? Would you care to prove it? The word 'Yangtze' is still widely current in English language contexts in China (newspapers, books, other materials). There was a book in Chinese during the 1990s deploring the state of the Yangtze River which used the name 'Yangzi'. There is a petrochemical company that calls itself 'Yangzi'. Even in China, it's not as though 'Yangzi/Yangtze' has suddenly and completely been extirpated (although the language police might like it that way).

As for 'Peking', no less a body than Peking University still uses the name Peking in preference to Beijing. So does the Peking Union Hospital.

A similar point applies to the word 'Cantonese'. People in Beijing are often nonplussed by the word 'Cantonese' when you use it because they've never heard it. On your grounds, 'Cantonese' should be banished from English usage. And yet, the word 'Cantonese' is not only universally used in the West, it is also well known amongst Cantonese people themselves, who are quite happy to use it when speaking English! So are we to ban 'Cantonese' because northern Chinese speaking English have not bothered to acquaint themselves with the English name of the popular southern dialect, cuisine, and pop music?

Comment by Bathrobe 2 August 2005

As per above discussion, the Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(use_English) states that the Wikipedia convention is: "Title your pages using the English name, if one exists, and give the native spelling on the first line of the article. If the native spelling is not in the Latin alphabet, also provide a Latin transliteration. Only use the native spelling as an article title if it is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form." What is important in the naming of this English wikipedia article is what English speaking people know the river as most commonly. In the Chinese language version of wikipedia of course it would be different.--AYArktos 00:28, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at three publications of maps, all of them Chinese publications. Even for the city maps of Shanghai where the Long River/Chang Jiang was called Yangtze River locally in the old days (i.e. pre-PRC, 1948 and earlier), this name is NO LONGER on the maps. Anyone who is looking for Yangtze River or 扬子江 can not find it on the maps any longer. The name 扬子江 is gone for good. If you type in the name Long River or Chang Jiang, Google does give you the info.

"Peking" was obviously a mispronounciation (or a hearing problem) by the early missionaries or whosoever. "j" was mispronounced as "k". "B" was mispronounced as "P". Such early day mistakes were passed down and carried on with ignorant naivety. It's amazing. (I am not the same person who originated this thread.)

Please check your facts before accusing others of 'ignorant naivety'. The Chinese sound 'b' is actually an unaspirated /p/, it is not an English voiced /b/. For speakers of languages (like Japanese) where their own 'p' sound is unaspirated, Chinese 'b' indeed sounds like 'p'. To English speakers it sounds like 'b', even though strictly speaking it isn't. So you are incorrect when you call it a mispronunciation or hearing problem. As for the 'k' in Peking, this dates back to an older pronunciation of Mandarin that appears to have been current when the name Peking was first heard by foreigners. This 'k' sound (actually a 'g' sound if you follow the practice of modern pin'yin) can still be found in some dialects of Chinese (including, it seems, dialects of Mandarin). So it is not a case of 'j' being mispronounced as 'k', as you assert.

Also, googling 'Long River' doesn't come up with much about the Yangtze, at least not in the first page. 'Long River' doesn't appear to have much acceptance as the English name of the river.

Bathrobe 2 August 2005

Chang Jiang is a river of China, so it should be named according to the standard name of China.

Reply to the above:

Why this unrelenting drive to force conformity with the standard name in China? Chang Jiang is indeed a river of China, but even in Chinese it is not known as the Chang Jiang along its entire length. Above Yibin it is called the Jinsha River. In Tibet it is called the Tongtian River (in Chinese, of course, not Tibetan -- you will notice that the (Han) Chinese don't accord to the Tibetans the respect that they demand from the rest of the world.)

The Mekong has different names in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand/Laos, and China. In English we call it the Mekong, which is one name by which it is known in Cambodia. Nobody tries to force their own name on the river when writing in English. Except, of course, the Chinese, who insist on calling it the Lancang River, I guess on the grounds that it's a 'river of China'. As a result, you now sometimes see the river's name hyphenated as Lancang-Mekong. I really don't see how this is an advance on simply calling it the Mekong.

Shouting that 'It's Chinese, you've got to follow Chinese usage!' is an oft-used argument and has its merits, but all too often it seems to be used to drown out everyone else's voices.

Bathrobe 11:09, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I looked at three publications of maps, all of them Chinese publications. Even for the maps of Shanghai where the Long River/Chang Jiang was called Yangtze River locally in the old days (i.e. pre-PRC, 1948 and earlier), this name is NO LONGER on the maps. Anyone who is looking for Yangtze River or ( ) can not find it on the maps any longer.

Reply: The Wikipedia article points out that Chang Jiang is used on many maps. So if people read the article, they can easily find the river on Chinese-published maps :)

Thinking about this relentless push for Chinese names (including 'Chang Jiang'), it seems to be not unrelated to a desire to assert 'Chinese sovereignty', as seen from statements like 'Chang Jiang is a river of China, so it should be named according to the standard name of China'. It also appears to lie behind the practice of Hong Kong English-language school textbooks (post-reversion), which quite curiously use the name 'Gobi Shamo' for the Gobi Desert and 'Qingzang Gaoyuan' for Qingzang plateau, etc.

There are a number of questions about this approach:

(1) The drive to impose Chinese names seems to be a one-way street. For instance, Chinese-language textbooks don't refer to American or Australian deserts as 'xxxxx dei-se-te'. One is thus curious to know the logical grounds on which English-speakers are expected to use the Chinese word for 'desert' or 'plateau'. (In fact, the Gobi does not belong only to China, and the word 'Gobi' itself is a Mongolian word meaning 'desert', so the idea that Gobi Shamo is the 'correct name' is actually rather strange.) In Chinese, the Nile is called 尼罗河, which is rather different from the Arabic name! How many Egyptians would understand a Chinese tourist if he/she insisted on calling it the 'Niluo'?

(2) The drive is more politically inspired than historically based. For instance, there seems to a kind of perception that the name 'Formosa' is a case of subtle Western imperialist aggression against Chinese sovereign territory. In point of fact, the island of Taiwan has been known as 'Formosa' for much longer than it has been known as 'Taiwan'. 'Formosa' was bestowed by the Portuguese before that island was ever settled by Chinese or ever came under Chinese sovereignty; 'Taiwan' is believed to be based on a landform near the Dutch colony in Formosa, which was much later. One does not have to look far for a case where sovereignty over island territories but does not rule out a foreign name -- the Bonin Islands, called the Ogasawaras by their Japanese owners.

In the case of 'Chang Jiang', this appears to be a newish name for the river, which actually used to be called the Da Jiang 大江 or Great River. It is even possible (although I will admit that this is pure speculation) that the use of 'Yangtze' for the whole river predates the usage of the Chinese name 'Chang Jiang' to do so.

(3) The Chinese themselves are inconsistent in their practice. The 'Chang Jiang' is supposedly applied to the whole river, but in practice many Chinese maps mark the section above Yibin as the 'Jinsha River (金沙江)', without any mention of 'Chang Jiang'.

(4) Another problem is that sovereignty in names, like national sovereignty, seems to stop at the border. So 'Gobi Shamo' is valid only inside China; the Mongolian part you can call what you like. 'Lancang Jiang' is similarly valid only inside Chinese territory; the Southeast Asian river you can call what you want. This rather ridiculous situation comes about when nations try to assert 'sovereignty' in names over physical features that stretch over national boundaries.

(5) A final issue is that standardisation of names in China rides over local usage. Given that the Chinese themselves are agreed on the need to unify place names in Mandarin, there can be no fundamental objection to this, but it is useful to realise that names like 'Xiamen' and 'Jinmen' are actually quite far removed from the local inhabitants' pronunciation, which is 'Amoy' and 'Quemoy' respectively. To say that these places were 'formerly' known as 'Amoy' and 'Quemoy', as some observers are wont to do, is a little disingenuous.

Given the above, the drive to impose the name 'Chang Jiang' seems rather doctrinaire, to say the least. Like the Danube, the Volga, or the Nile, is it not possible to recognise that different people have different names for these natural features? Why does it have to be tied up with 'national sovereignty'? Rather than try to make an issue out of every name, or force conformity with somebody's standard, surely it is better to simply note the differences.

The general trend in English for some decades now has been towards greater nativization of foreign names.(usually to foreign national standards and not dialect) This is not just a reaction to foreign pressure and certainly not limited to China. Livorno has ousted Leghorn, Istanbul has ousted Constantinople, Mainz has ousted Mayence, etc. Similarly, Taiwan, Xiamen and Beijing have in fact ousted Formosa, Amoy, and Peking. (The only place I now see using Peking is Peking University itself! OK, now I see you have already mentioned this above. Actually after visiting PUMC and hearing "Xiehe" in Chinese repeatedly, I was starting to say "Xiehe" in English, probably a good example of how nativization of foreign words naturally takes place.)

Incorporation of foreign terms for landforms is also not limited to Chinese. English-language atlases are full of Russian nizhmennost, Arabic wadi, French lac, Spanish rio, etc. It can be helpful in finding the foreign term when there is not a one-to-one mapping between English and foreign terms.

The Japanese name for the Bonin Islands probably hasn't entered English simply because there is so little need to mention the islands at all except in historic context.

Changjiang vs. Yangtze is a marginal case at this point in time. I don't think there is a clear choice between compatibility with current Chinese and historical English, so I don't care that much which is the redirect and which the actual page. I do think you are too quick to paint the issue as a conflict between nations, which is unnecessarily inflammatory.

You can dismiss it as irrelevant to English, but another point is that Yangzi refers to the ancient Yangzhou Province (see Zhou), so that the sections in the upstream provinces would logically be called Jingzi Jiang, Liangzi Jiang, Yizi Jiang, and then you need a term for the whole thing. If it were up to me I would just select Jiang as the English term, as it's short and easy to say, is probably the most common Chinese way of referring to the river anyway, and appears in common compounds like Jiangnan, Jiangxi..--JWB 06:34, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the intelligent input to this issue. Yes, I agree that what is stated above is my own particular point of view and I believe I presented it as such. I am not opposed to name changes per se, but I do object to (1) 'ideological' attempts to enforce usage and (2) spurious reasons given for such enforcement. (Inflammatory or not, there does seem to be a nationalistic element behind the drive to enforce Chinese names). But as you say, nativisation is the trend and in time Yangtze River will probably come round. Bathrobe 02:14, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this should be moved to "Chang Jiang" - the "Chang Jiang" is displacing "Yangtze". In fact, I could do that right now!

WhisperToMe 15:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately it hasn't yet. Yangtze is still the normal usage in English.

Bathrobe 04:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It won't be in a minute. WhisperToMe 17:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pollution

Shouldn't there be a section on this page about the vast chemical pollution of this river?