From Takow to Kaohsiung

Daan (大安) District, Taipei City

Daan's (大安; "Great Peace / Tranquility /Seurity") toponymic history is a little obscure, which is perhaps surprising, since it is a relative newcomer, as the Taipei Basin was developed somewhat later than other areas along the west and northwest coasts.

Lying outside the original Taipei City, to the east and southeast of the short-lived, late-19th-century city walls, this was still farmland at the time to which its name can be traced, and which seems to be connected to the irrigation channels that brought river waters here. These are known in Hoklo Taiwanese as chun (圳).

[MC: The fact that a) the character is not even in the Far East Chinese-English Dictionary; b) has a different pronunciation in Taiwan's Mandarin, zun, from PRC Mandarin's zhen; and c) certainly exists in Cantonese given the existence of the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen (深圳) in the PRC's Guangdong Province; together suggest it is an old character, retained in southern regionalects of Fujian, Taiwan and Guangdong, but perhaps not in more recent, northern regionalects, such as Beijingese and its close relative, Mandarin.].

Various theories as to the origin of the district's name exist, though none seems definitive. These include:
i) The irrigaation channel serving this neighborhood was simply called 大安圳 ("Great Peace Irrigation").
ii) The irrigation channel took a sharp turn or had a half-moon-shaped storage pool (in the area of today's Ren-ai Circle-Anhe Rd-Yanji Rd area), giving rise to the name 大灣 (Mdn. Dawan, in which wan, as well as being a "bay", also indicates a "bend in a river" or, in this case, in an irrigation channel), and which was later changed to the similar-sounding but more elegant Daan.
iii) Many of the immigrants to this area came from Anxi (安溪) area in Fujian's Quanzhou prefecture, giving rise to the nickname that this was the new home of the "Great Anxi" (偉大安溪) poeple.


[iv) MC: is there a possibility that "Daan" reflects an earlier Aboriginal name? The -an ending is said to be common in Austronesian place names, indicating "place".]

In both the late-Period of Japanese Rule and postwar ROC administrative era, several smaller units, including Daan Village, were combined together under the name of Daan to become a district of Taipei City.



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