The Origin of the Name “Canton”
Canton? or Guangzhou?
When words from a relatively phonetically flexible language, such as English, typically get imported into a Chinese language, there is usually an attempt made by the Chinese language to replicate the sound of the original language. Melliflous words such as “Italy” (意大利 yi3daai6lei6) have little problem adapting to the limited sound palette of Chinese languages, but more complicated phonemes, such as those found in some English personal names, often lose many syllables or sounds when transferred. Sometimes the original name, the endonym, is abandoned altogther. Instead of adapting the word into the Chinese soundset, Chinese opted for the concise “beautiful country” (美國 mei5gwok3) as its exonym for “America”.
Endonyms and exonyms often have curious relationships, but just as often they have no relationship at all. The country commonly known today as China is referred to in Chinese as Zunggwok (中國 zung1gwok3). No Chinese ever used the term “China” to refer to themselves. But nearly everyone else does.
So where did the term “China” come from? And why do we call Guangzhou “Canton”?
The origin of the name “China” is most likely the Sanskrit word Cīna (चीन) which was a generic term for “the East” and eventually changed to specify the cultural complex of China. The Sanskrit word first appeared in the classic Indian work Arthaśāstra by Kautilīya, dated to about 300 BCE. Examination of the ancient southern polity Yelang (夜郎 ye6long4), which existed from third century BCE until its absorption into the northern Han empire in the first
Location of modern-day Guizhou
century CE, corroborates this conclusion. Yelang was situated south of modern-day Sichuan, with its capital located somewhere in the western part of today’s Guizhou province. (1) Yelang was populated by the Yi or Lolo people, whose indigenous name for the polity was “zhina” (ʐina), which is strikingly similar to the word “China” used today, more than two millenia later.
Written in Yi "zina"
The earliest Western use of a term related to the English “China” is the Greek Thinai (θίναι), which appeared in “The Voyage around the Erythraean Sea”, compiled between 80 and 89 CE, around the same time the Yelang polity was losing its sovereignty, and later Ptolemy refers to the same area with the name Sinai (Σίναι).
The Sanskrit was the term’s ultimate source and entry into the Indo-European language macrofamiliy, the predominant language group on Earth that includes languages from English to Russian to Persian to Hindi. Taking into account Greece’s enormous cultural and linguistic relevance, these later mentions most likely played a significant role in disseminating the term to related languages. In the Indo-European family some of the variants include China (English, German, Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish); Chine (French); Chin (Persian); Çin (Turkish); Kina (Swedish, Norwegian); Chiny (Polish); Čína (Czech), Kiina (Finnish); Cheen (Hindi) and Kína (Hungarian).(2) The languages genetically unrelated to but geographically proximal to Chinese have predictably similar terms: Chūgoku (Japanese); Jungguk (Korean); Trung Quốc (Vietnamese), all of which derive their pronunciation from the Han characters anyways.
As for “Canton” — the story is not nearly as dramatic as the entry of “China” into the English language, but it does have a twist. Many assume that the name of the Guangdong province (廣東 gwong2dung1), the cultural center of Cantonese people as well as the name of our site, combined with English-speakers’ propensity for destroying pronunciation was the origin of the name “Canton” as it is known in English today. However, English actually got the term “Canton” from a Portuguese mistake. They were the first Europeans to arrive in Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong, and probably confused the Chinese word “Guangdong” for the
Macau on Google Maps. Note also the name "São Lázaro" (pt. for St. Lazarus)
name of the city, and subsequently pronounced the name of the city in Portuguese as “Cantão”. The tilde over a vowel in Portuguese indicates a nasalized vowel, meaning a slight “n” or “ng” sound is incidentally produced with the vowel, so the Portuguese name is actually quite similar to both the English and Chinese. This mistake is why we know the city Guangzhou as Canton today, and Guangdong as… well, Guangdong.(3) “Macau” took a similar route to English, which partially explains the puzzling Chinese endonym “Oumun” (澳門 ou3mun4).
The idea that languages acquire lexical items from contact with other languages is not new, but it’s interesting to note that neither of the two terms discussed were adopted directly from Chinese into English. “China” came from the Sanskrit Cīna, which was likely influenced by the Yi ʐina and although Yi is a Sino-Tibetan language just like Chinese, it is only very distantly related. “Canton” came not from a mispronunciation from the Chinese Guangdong, but a misattribution of Portuguese explorers to Guangzhou.
It is said that every word in every language is a mini-history, and even the humble name “Canton” has a story to tell. That is why language preservation must become one of humanity’s highest priorities.
Notes
1 There’s an interesting historical note from the Yelang period. For much of its history but most significantly in the first century BCE, Yelang (probably unwillingly) served as a middleman between the bellicose Han people of the north and the more sedate Southern Yue. At one point the Han wished to coerce the Yelang into fighting with them against the Southern Yue, and although these plans failed to manifest, Yelang was eventually integrated into the Han region. Does this set historical precedence for today’s antagonism between Han and Yue people?
2 Note that English is the only language that pronounces the term with a diphthong “ai” /aɪ/. All other languages, including the distantly related Finnish, Hungarian, Hindi, etc. logically pronounce it with a pure vowel — “ee” /i/. This is a fantastic casualty of the Great Vowel Shift (the second chart, “Front vowels”), which is one of the main reasons English spelling is so unpredictable and apparently illogical.
3 Disclaimer here. “Canton” can also be used to refer to Guangdong. I refer specifically to the usage as made popular in, I suppose, “uninformed English” from probably the 17th century until recent history.
References
Denis Crispin Twitchett, John King Fairbank, ”The Cambridge history of China, Volume 2; Volume 8″, Cambridge University Press, 1978, ISBN 0521243335
Geoff Wade, “The Polity of Yelang（夜郎）and the Origins of the Name ‘China’” Sino-Platonic Papers, 188 (May 2009)
“The History of ʐi-na” (History of Ye-lang), Sichuan Nationalities Publishing House, 1998.
Related posts:
Simplified Characters Might Cause Lost in Pronunciation for Cantonese
Differences between Mandarin and Cantonese; Written and Spoken
Qingming Festival Along With Useful Terms
Regional differences in Cantonese vocabulary
Something Just for Fun – A Rant
Comments
It looks like there may have been some attempt to Sinicize(?) names like “America” (美利堅) and “England”(英格蘭), but them twp-character abbreviations are just so much more convenient. 
You probably knew that already. Sorry for stating the obvious! 
美利堅合眾國(United States of America)
mei lei gin hap jung gwok
英格蘭(England)
ying gaak laan
大不列顛與北愛爾蘭聯合王國
daai bat lit din yu bak ngoi yi laan lyun hap wong gwok
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
[Reply]
MakMak Reply:
September 13th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
America used to be 亞美利加 and 花旗國 (Starry Banner Country)
England as 英格蘭
and France as 法蘭斯
The reason as I learned from a forum was because they were all derived from Shanghainese. Now, I can’t verify this but apparently in Shanghainese they sound closer to what they’re supposed to be.
In addition to those three country names, there was also 麥克風 (microphone), 馬達 (motor), and 幽默 (humor [although I think this is very mainstream now]).
There was also another one… 邏輯 (logic) I forgot which one that is…
But hey! Cantonese has it’s share too like 茄汁 (ketchup), lychee (荔枝), kumquat (金橘).. oh wait no no hang on, that’s exported, not imported… hahaha
I meant more like 的士 (Taxi) and 巴士 (Bus) ~~
[Reply]
Yun-Tak Reply:
September 14th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Thanks Khatzumoto, I’m probably the worst at Chinese out of everyone here, and I haven’t come across those “sound-like” terms before. Interesting!
[Reply]
支那
ji na
中國。梵語ｃiｎａ的音譯。原見於漢譯佛典，係古印度對中國的稱呼，日本尚沿用之。
Wow, I had no idea of the Sanskrit origin. How did that then flow out to English?
[Reply]
MakMak Reply:
September 13th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Yep, and 支那 said by Japanese people to Chinese people is offensive because of WWII and prior stuff. Whether or not that still persists today… no clue.
[Reply]
Yun-Tak Reply:
September 14th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Remember that the relevant period is about two thousand years ago, just around 100 BCE to 100 CE. It took about 400 years for the Sanskrit to reach Greece, which as we know is the starting point for many words in English today. Note that Old English didn’t even exist until 600-700 years later, about 1000 CE! As most words were moving around at this point in history the actual method of transmission may have been trade or hegemonic warfare.
It’s also quite dramatic to look at the geographical distribution of those languages which have a similar name for China: Norway to Iran to India to Spain. In historical linguistics this is a clear sign that the term entered the common ancestor to all these languages very, very long ago.
[Reply]
Also, another thing on Cantonese and exonyms: according to the Cambridge English dictionary, the English word “Japan” came from Cantonese pronunciation of 日本（yat bun）→ Portuguese → English.
Do you know if that’s true/any details on that? Maybe you know a deeper/clearer/more accurate transmission route…? Maybe I should stop talking now. 
[Reply]
Yun-Tak Reply:
September 14th, 2010 at 9:57 am
It’s true that once again the Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Japan and introduce it to the Western world, but–and I don’t know for sure, this is pure speculation–it is more likely that they left China for Japan around the area of the northern Wu dialects (Shanghainese). Indeed the modern Shanghainese term for Japan is “Zeppen” which indicates their pronunciation was probably more affricate (the buzzing sound) than Cantonese’s glide (the “y” sound). Even modern Mandarin’s “r” in “Riben” is not a far cry from English “j”. I wouldn’t rule out Cantonese entirely, but the name “Japan” likely originated from a northern Chinese dialect.
edit: OED mentions a Malay “Japang” which may have been how the Portuguese encountered the term, but again this is ultimately from an old Chinese pronunciation of 日本.
[Reply]
Your site is very interesting, let’s link together and share the Cantonese culture.
For learning colloquial cantonese, please check the link:
http://goto-cantonese.blogspot.com/
[Reply]
thanks so much for your info! The explanation of Canton was exactly what i was looking for !
I live in Beijing!
thanks!
chelsey
[Reply]
You definitely know more about this than I do, so thanks for the enlightenment.
I had always assumed that Canton is just an oversimplified spelling of Kwangtung, and that Kwangtung is the Meyer-Wempe romanization for “gwong2 dung1″.
Do you happen to know the history of “Kwangtung” as well?
[Reply]
Yun-Tak Reply:
September 14th, 2010 at 10:28 am
I’m not sure if there’s much of a history, but the difference between consonants is explained by the different romanization standards. MW doesn’t alternate between [k] and [g] to indicate aspiration like Jyutping or Yale do, MW uses an apostrophe [k'] and [k]. This is actually more accurate but not as intuitive for English speakers. Same thing with the [d] and [t].
If you’re asking about the etymology of the name itself, I believe it’s luckily a straightforward derivation for once. 廣 meaning “broad” or “widespread” and 東 meaning “east” = eastward expansion.
[Reply]
Ben Reply:
September 14th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Thanks, I guess I was also wondering about the relationship between “Canton” and “Kwangtung”. Which came first? Is one based on the other? I have always thought perhaps “Kwangtung” came first (and better preserved the pronunciation) and then “Canton” is just an evolution of “Kwangtung” that is easier to read (but less accurate pronunciation).
[Reply]
Yun-Tak Reply:
September 14th, 2010 at 10:57 am
I imagine Canton came first into English; Kwangtung is simply one of the many romanizations of 廣東 and often the oral term spreads much earlier than the written, simply due to the mechanics of the time. That may have changed recently since written communication is somewhat faster than oral today: notice we are communicating exclusively by writing. In an alternate history, say the Pt. emailed Europe about their discovery, we may have seen something like “Kwangtung” appear much earlier, and Canton may never have existed.
I suppose the two have an oblique relationship, but they’re not really based, per se, on either one. Canton derives exclusively from the Pt. attempting to replicate a Chinese saying 廣東; no romanization, “guangdong” or “kwangtung”, involved at all.
Right, I mention that a similar mistaken assumption (“Many assume that the name of the Guangdong province… combined with English-speakers’ propensity for destroying pronunciation was the origin of the name “Canton” as it is known in English today.”) is very widespread, and it’s not hard to see why. By the way, remember that one of the main points of the post is that we bizarrely call Guangzhou “Canton”. Although “Canton” sometimes refers to Guangdong, its a classic case of synecdoche, extension of the name of a part to mean the whole, much like sometimes news reports sometimes just call Russia “Moscow” or France “Paris”. “Kwangtung” as far as I know was never used in this way, to refer to the capital.