Significant names and titles, their spellings along with their indigenous pronunciations, contain historical processes and help explain the identities of the bearers. Therefore, it is required to carefully (re-)examine the names and titles of various historical entities in order to get a more informed understanding of such. On this note, it should be worth reviewing the rendering in different languages of the dynasties’ names of East Asian polities.
The English designations with which to refer to the last dynasty on the vast East Asian continent that existed until the first decade of the twentieth century were “Tsing” and “Ching”. These two designations have now been changed to “Qing”. If one enters either “Tsing” or “Ching” in the Oxford English Dictionary’s search, both ones get directed to “Qing”.[1] According to the dictionary, the usual transcription during the 1700s was “Tsing”, whereas it was either “Ts’ing” or “Ch’ing” (the latter is Wade-Giles transliteration) during the 1800s, and since the 1900s it changed from “T’sing” through “Ching” to “Qing”, the last of which is the current usage.
Prominent usages of the previous term “Tsing” are found in the texts of treaties that the “Ta Tsing Empire” entered into with Western states during the nineteenth century. The treaties concluded in 1844 (Treaty of Peace, Amity, and Commerce Between the United States of America and the Chinese Empire, signed at Wanghia), 1858 (Treaty Between the United States of America and the Chinese Empire, signed at Tientsin), 1868 (Additional Articles to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the “Ta Tsing Empire” of 18th of June, 1858, signed at Washington), in all of which one party was the United States, designates the other party as the “Ts Tsing Empire” in their preambles. In treaties in 1851, 1858, 1860, where one contracting party was Russia, the other party was termed “(le (Grand) Empire) Ta-Tsing”. In the treaty between the Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, on the one hand, and the Empire of ‘China’, on the other hand, signed at Canton in 1847, the empire was called “Ta Tsing” in its preamble. “Ta(-)Tsing” was the transliteration of 大淸.
The other previous term “Ching” is a telling one, in form and sound, for its similarity to and difference from earlier terms in other languages. “Chin” in “Ching” or “China” seems to have been pronounced close to /ʃin/, /tʃɪn/, or /kɪn/ in some European languages. Most importantly, it was close to /ʃin/ in Manchu language (滿州語). The sound /ʃin/ is incorporated into the surname (姓) of the later-to-be Manchu ruling house, 愛新覺羅, where 愛新 is pronounced in Manchu as “ais(h)in” /īʃin/ and 覺羅 close to “gioro” /kiɔrɔ/.[2] In Book 1 of the Veritable Records of the Manchus《滿洲實錄》 the surname is given as 愛新覺羅, with 愛新 meaning 金 (gold), while the name (名) of the sixth-generation ancestor of Nurhachi (愛新覺羅努爾哈赤, 1559-1626) as 布庫哩雍順.[3] The sound /ʃin/ in indigenous Manchu pronunciation, represented by 新, seems to have already been current for the surname of those at the court or other influential personages during the ‘Jin’ dynasty (金朝). In some entries of the History of the Jurchen (女眞/女直) Jin dynasty (金史), 愛申 appears as surname for a commander (節度使) or an inspector (刺史).[4] 申 is pronounced /ʃin/ in Jurchen language (女眞語)[5] and is thus the same sound as 新 in Manchu, as 신 in Korean and シン in Japanese. This indicates that 金, used both as the name of the state/dynasty – which was subsequently changed, in ideographic expression (only), to 淸 – and as the surname of the Manchu 淸 ruling house, indeed contained the sound close to /ʃin/ in Manchu.
金國, /ɑnʧun ɡurun/ in Jurchen and /aisin gurun/ in Manchu, was renamed as 大淸國 “daicing gurun” in Manchu, where the sound of “cing” is close to /tʃɪŋ/, around the years 1636-1637. The polity in question, however, was termed in Latin “Imperii Sinarvm” (“Empire of Sina”) in a map done in the late seventeenth century.[6] In French, it was named “la Chine”, with “Chine” pronounced as /ʃin/, for example in a map published in 1787 which included “Empire de la Chine” as part of its title.[7] In French, it is still termed as “(la) Chine” with the sound like 新 /ʃin/ as in Manchu. Also, in Japanese, 淸 in 淸國 is still pronounced as しん, close to /ʃin/.
Yu Kiljun (兪吉濬, 1856-1914), in his tome《西遊見聞》(Things Seen and Heard in Travels to the West), added the term 支那 right below 淸國 as if equivalent to it, while listing the names of the states (邦國의區別). Therein the sound of 支那 was marked as “시나” in Korean, which is close to /sina/ or /ʃina/.[8] It may have reflected the Japanese pronunciation, considering Yu’s stay in Japan for several years while writing the manuscript of the book, but the sound is also close to the French one. In comparison, the ‘standard’ German pronunciation of it is /çiːnaː/ and in southern Germany and in Austria they say /kiːnaː/. In Spanish, it is pronounced /tʃina/, not /tʃaɪnə/. In other words, the pronunciation /tʃaɪnə/ or /tʃʌɪnə/ is only U.S. or British one, not the ‘correct’ one.
Yu labelled the sound “창이나” (he seems to have perceived the sound as /tʃaŋɪnə/, rather than /tʃaɪnə/) as the one in English (“英音으로”), as in the image below. Noticeably, he added below the sound of it as he had been familiar with, “시나” (/sina/ or /ʃina/), which is not like the English pronunciation.
In any case, without 那, which is pronounced /na/ or “나”, which means the location of a nation and corresponds – both in sound and meaning – to the alphabet “a” of “Sina” in Latin, it again gives the sound /ʃin/ as of “aisin” in Manchu and “Chine” in French. It may be inferred, then, that 淸(國), well after it was renamed from 金(國), was named and pronounced with the sound /ʃin/ by those in the regions and states where, among other languages, French, which had been the European lingua franca until around the early nineteenth century, was the dominant language, and later on by the Japanese as well.
“Chin(e)”, with its sound /ʃin/, seems to have transformed, in both form and sound, to “Ching” with its sound /tʃɪŋ/, as English, gradually replacing French, took the place of the lingua franca in Europe and worldwide through the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. “Ching” might be the combined form of “Chine”, as in French, and “Cing”, as in “daicing gurun” in Manchu, and it came to have the /tʃɪŋ/ sound. But “-ching” seems to have had the sound /ʃɪŋ/ at least until around the first decade of the last century. For example, Oppenheim’s International Law published in 1905 mentions the name “Kowching”[9], transliteration of the British transport leased by the Ching government, 高陞號 (고승호), which was attacked by the Japanese navy and sank on July 25, 1894, while ferrying Ching troops. Here the sound of “-ching” is close to /ʃɪŋ/, not /tʃɪŋ/. For the same sound, Westlake’s International Law (1910) names it “Kow-shing.”[10] Similarly can be said of ‘China’ now as pronounced /tʃaɪnə/, which is the combined form of “Chin” and “a”. If the sound of “Chin” was to be derived from the Manchu pronunciation of /ʃin/ and “a” is a Latin suffix meaning the location of a nation, then the sound of ‘China’ should have been close to /ʃɪnə/.
In terms of spelling of the variants of “Ching”, while “Tsing”, “Ching”, and “Qing” are all supposed to be pronounced as /tʃɪŋ/, “Qing” does stand out because “Q” does not itself sound like “tʃ” in the English alphabet. This latter spelling “Qing” is quite a recent modification from the two previous ones. In the British Library, materials acquired before 1966 were catalogued using the Wade-Giles transliteration system. The U.S. Library of Congress officially adopted the pinyin system of romanization in 1998. Not just Fairbank and his collaborators used the name “Ch’ing” in their papers but academic articles by other scholars published during the 1980s would still use “Ching”. It seems that the spelling “Qing” has been accepted in general, as was the case with the U.S. Library of Congress, following the pinyin system, which was developed in the 1950s and revised since.
However, by the image of the bank notes issued by the “Ta Ching Government”, it is evident that the dynastic government in question named itself in English as “the (Ta-)Ching” (大淸), as seen below[11], unless such denotation was made under an overriding influence of any outside party, such as the then British government.
The main problem with “Qing” is that it may induce, inadvertently or not, an artificial amnesia about the historical processes and identities the referent evokes, while its meanings and indigenous pronunciation are being gradually fudged and forgotten as its original significations fall into disuse. The denotation “Qing”, that goes in tandem with the pinyin system, may in this regard serve as a symbol manipulation, even if unintentional. If it is the case that the Ta-Ching government issued such bank notes by the name “Ching” for themselves, then it would make more historical sense to use the very name “Ching”, than to use “Qing” or any other, when referring to the dynasty/state in English.
[1] Oxford English Dictionary, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/266030?redirectedFrom=Tsing#eid
[2] 張華克, 《舊滿洲檔》詞彙解析法的建立—以清初四組滿文詞彙釋義為例 (Establishment of the Lexical Analysis on “Jiu Manzhou Dang” : An Architecture Erected by Four Groups of Manchu Vocabulary in Early Qing Dynasty), 中國文化大學 博士論文 (2014), pp. 15, 244.
[3]《滿洲實錄卷一》滿洲源流: …我及天女佛庫倫所生姓愛新 漢語金也 覺羅 姓也 名布庫哩雍順… https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=402889
[4] 中央硏究院 歷史語言硏究所 漢籍電子文獻資料庫, 基本檢索: 愛申 http://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihpc/hanjiquery?@72^453365047^22^^^1@@133241520#top
[5] Jīn Qǐzōng 金啓孮. Nǚzhēnwén Cídiàn 女真文辞典. Beijing : Wenwu Chubanshe 文物出版社, 1984, Index to Jin Qizong’s 1984 Jurchen Dictionary《女真文辞典》索引 Index Ref. 2-12, 2-13. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Jurchen/JQZ1984_Index.html
[6] Imperii Sinarum nova descriptio. https://exhibits.stanford.edu/renaissance-exploration/catalog/nx013yk8683
[7] Empire De La Chine, rme, De Coree et Isles Du Japon (10 of 34). https://exhibits.stanford.edu/ruderman/catalog?utf8=%E2%9C%93&per_page=100&sort=author_sort+asc%2C+title_sort+asc&view=slideshow&exhibit_id=ruderman&search_field=search&q=Empire+De+La+Chine
[8] 兪吉濬, 《西遊見聞》 景仁文化社, 1969, 第一編 「邦國의區別」, 十五
[9] Oppenheim, Lassa. International Law: A Treatise Vol I. Peace, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905, p. 375.
[10] Westlake, John. International Law Part 1 Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1910, p. 26.
[11] The British Museum, Ta-Ching Government Bank https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG166828