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A: No. Kinmen is a postal romanization of the Chinese name 金門. This transliteration system was developed in the 1890s. It is based on pronunciation in Southern Mandarin, a dialect spoken in the Lower Yangtze region, including the city of Nanjing. The spelling Kinmen is often used in material published by the Taiwanese government.[1]
"Jinmen" is a transliteration of the same characters made using the pinyin system. Pinyin spelling reflects pronunciation in putonghua, a standardized form of the Northern Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing and other northern cities. Schools in China have taught pupils Northern Mandarin pronunciation since the 1930s.[2] Pinyin was adopted by China in 1958 and internationally in 1979.[3] Taiwanese schools also teach Northern Mandarin pronunciation, called Guoyu in Taiwan. The government adopted pinyin in 2009.[4]
An article called Jinmen would essentially duplicate this article.
References
^For example, 2019-2020 Taiwan at a glance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan), October 2019, pp. 1, 22.
Unnecessary references to the "Republic of China" were removed. This term is rarely used. Our own article on this country is simply named Taiwan.
A paragraph on the pinyin name, "Jinmen," was added. On GBooks, Jinmen is used far more than "Chin-men," a Wade-Giles spelling which was given more coverage in the article prior to my recent edits. As the island's Cold War prominence faded in the 1980s and 1990s, usage for Kinmen declined, but not nearly as much as usage for Quemoy. Check out this ngram.
Various inferior sources were replaced with 2019-2020 Taiwan at a glance, a yearbook published by Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This book is sent to libraries internationally as a reference work. So it can be considered a more authoritative source than the various government web pages that I have removed, most of which are no longer online. These include the the Ministry of the Interior, the county, and the airport (huh?). This is just about neater sourcing since the various branches of the Taiwanese government provide consistent information. I thought this matter was worth mentioning in case anyone wondered why I removed so many characters from the article. 5440orSleep (talk) 12:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have to wonder why the 1958 bombardment and the island’s Cold War status were removed from the lead. These issues are surely more relevant than the names of the outlying island and the status of the disbanded Fujian Province.
I would also restore the discussion of travel restrictions to the lead.
I have asked around to try to determine why so many Wikipedia editors add the phrase "Republic of China" to article text. The answer seems to be because it is "official" in the sense that the Taiwanese government does this. Of course, the government uses "Taiwan" far more frequently than it does ROC. But perhaps a longer phrase sounds more official. Asking how the government would do it is not how editing is supposed to work. Copy editors follow thier prefered reference works. In this case, the relevant reference works almost invarably use “Taiwan.” The The Chicago Manual of Style recommends The World Fackbook for this purpose. "Taiwan" is also more practical since “People’s Republic of China” and “Republic of China” are confusingly similar names.
The reason the island is called Quemoy has nothing to do with the university. So this information doesn’t belong in the names section.
I’d like to restore the information that Taiwan officially uses pinyin to the “Names” section. The way it is written, it sounds like postal romanization is still a thing. 5440orSleep (talk) 08:56, 28 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
