卓蘭 Zhuolan Township, Miaoli County

Zhuolan 卓蘭 (lit.“eminent orchid”) Township, Miaoli County



Transliteration of the Pazih (巴則海) plains aboriginal name Tarien, meaning “beautiful open-country”, initially in land contracts during the Qing dynasty Yongzheng (雍正; 1723-35) reign period using the characters 搭連 (Hoklo Taiwanese: dah-lien; lit. “construct + connect”).



This was changed to 罩蘭 (Hoklo: da-lan; lit. “cover + orchid”) in 1836; appeared on the first government map of Taiwan as 打難 (Hoklo: da-lan; lit. “hit + difficulty”) in 1860; and became the present 卓蘭 (Japanese たくらん [Taku-ran]) in 1920.



Notes:

1) This is another example—like the title of this blog—where:

i) an aboriginal name is preserved by transliteration into Hoklo Taiwanese (Minnan; 閩南語) with no connection between the two names’ meanings;

ii) the characters are changed to preserve a similar punctuation in Japanese, again with no attention to meaning; and

iii) the written form (i.e. the "meaningless meaning") is preserved by the incoming ROC administration, but using Mandarin, thus leading to a change of pronunciation.



Hence, despite three“preservation” processes, none of the meaning, pronunciation or written name is preserved.



2) It might seem that Hakka pronunciations would have been used in this process, since the area was settled by Hakka. This may be the case [it is beyond my linguistic knowledge], but, while the Hoklo fit is excellent, the Hakka pronunciation of dap-lien for 打難 is less close to the Pazih original, while that of zau-lan for 罩蘭 is even less likely.







Text and photos © Jiyue Publications 2011