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A Problem of Names - On Hào jīng, Fēng hào, and Wàng chéng

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4 years ago
Dec 21, 2020, 2:33:50 AM

There are 3 names on Zhou's city list, Hào jīng, Fēng hào, and Wàng chéng, that caught my attention. Here is a screenshot of me try to generate these 3 names nicely next to each other:





Among them, Hào jīng 鎬京 was the initial capital of Zhou, and the in game Zhou capital will also be named Hào jīng. There is no problem here.


On the other hand, IRL, Hào jīng was the second Zhou capital city built in the Wei River region. The Zhou people/king also built another city previously in the region, called Fēng jīng 丰京.


The two cities, Fēng jīng and Hào jīng, were very close to each other, effectively being twin cities. Therefore, beginning from ancient Chinese texts, the two cities together sometimes can be called Fēng hào 丰鎬, combining their first characters together.


Here you can see the problem: In the game, Hào jīng and Fēng hào are two different cities, with Hào jīng being the capital. However, the name Fēng hào is in fact a collective name of both Fēng jīng and Hào jīng, which already includes Hào jīng. Therefore, having "Hào jīng" and "Fēng hào" as two different cities is not historically and toponymically right.


I would suggest change the city name "Fēng hào" to "Fēng jīng", to reflect the other city of the twin cities.



Moreover, another city name of the Zhou city list, Wàng chéng, is also not right. This name seems to reflect the second Zhou capital city, called Wangcheng 王城, in modern day Luoyang. However, the tone of 王城 is Wáng chéng instead of Wàng chéng - Wang 王 should be pronounced in second tone, not forth tone. Forth tone wang is a verb, means "to make [someone] a king", thus should not be used as a place name.


I would suggest change the name "Wàng chéng" to "Wáng chéng", to reflect the correct pronunciation.

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4 years ago
Dec 21, 2020, 11:48:38 AM

This is so cool. I wish you could get the Fēng hào when you use merge cities mechanic in the game with a tooltip explaining this historical fact :)

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