Chinese Language Stack Exchange
Chinese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [place-names]

Questions about names of places (toponyms), transliterations of foreign names into Chinese and vice versa, origins and variants. Use [names] for questions about person's names or other proper nouns.

Toponyms are the terms in a language used to designate places. They may be names of countries, cities or other geographical elements.

Toponyms are a kind of proper noun.

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list of Chinese language country name abbreviations

In watching CCTV-4 news, I frequently see country names abbreviated but miss the leading character before I can look it up carefully (I know the major ones). Is there a list anywhere of those standard abbreviations (most of the form X国)?
Joel Tenenbaum
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Shanxi old postmark: town and date

Can someone help me with this postmark? It is from Shanxi, but I can't desipher the date (around 1910?) and town.
user12890
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Why is there no 斯坦 suffix in 阿富汗?

I know Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan respectively are 阿富汗，哈萨克斯坦，吉尔吉斯斯坦，土库曼斯坦，乌兹别克斯坦. But why isn't Afghanistan translated as 阿富汗斯坦 with the 斯坦 suffix for "-stan" like the others?
WinMacLinUser
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What order does the country name sort by in Chinese?

I'm quite confused to see how the country name is sorted in Chinese. The pictures below are names of countries that show at the first and last of the total list. Ignore China and its administrative regions since it automatically puts them at the…
Blaszard
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Standardisation of place names in Chinese

I have asked a similar question about the standardisation of Chinese places names. A previous question talked about how governments are able to give the official place names (for example: 星加坡 vs 新加坡 and 漢城 vs 首爾). My question now is that some places…
cgo
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Disassemble address line

Given the following address line 惠州市惠阳区秋长镇白石村朝鲲产业园三态速递 Which of it is the "street name", which the state and which the city? I have to enter those fragments into a shipping address form. The available options for the state are as follows: 北京市 天津市…
Marcel Stör
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Was there ever a "Xijing?" Could it have been "Xi An?"

"Beijing" means "northern capital," and "Nanjing" means "southern capital." There is even a "Dongjing" or "eastern capital" that is WAY east of China. It's the city that the Japanese call "Tokyo." Was there ever a "Xijing" or "western capital?"…
Tom Au
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Chinese names for Lunar Features?

Are there names in Chinese for craters and other features on the Moon? Or are English/International names used instead?
Arkenstein XII
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Similarity in geographically close areas (越南,云南)

My question is simple: is it a coincidence that Yunnan and Vietnam (yue nan) are pronounced very similarly because they are geographically close? Would the nan(南) in (越南,云南) both be referring to a common southern region which categorizes the region…
udidosa
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Another unknown city - postmark -Anhui?

Can someone tell me the name of the city on this postal cancel? I believe it's from Anhui province from 1937, but I'm not sure.
user12890
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City Name on a Postmark

Can someone help me decipher the name of the post office (city name) on postmarks from 1953. I'm not sure if it's Nanking.
airways
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What building was mentioned in the following paragraph.: 如果單看設計圖的話，這棟大樓倒是和漢字六有點相似，不過中間的方形更像正方形。

What is this buildings name.: 準確的來說，這是一棟集政務院，眾議院和國家法院為一體的大型建築。   如果單看設計圖的話，這棟大樓倒是和漢字六有點相似，不過中間的方形更像正方形。
TylerL
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The ever changing names of places in chinese

One of the first things i learnt when studying chinese was the names of different places around the world. Most of the names from places are simply transliterations of their current forms. This means that some chinese characters used to name a place…
cgo
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Is there a way to differentiate Kanji and Hanzi?

eg 後樂園 is completely kanji but I thought it was a place in Taiwan until I looked it up and it was in Japan. Also what about reading it in the Chinese reading (hou le yuan) instead of the actual Japanese reading (korakuen)? I’m confused on cultural…
Kiribi
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