From Takow to Kaohsiung

Men (門; "Door / Gate / Gap / Harbor")

門 (Mdn. men; Hakka mun; Hoklo mng / mui) originally meant "door / gate", of which it is a pictograph.

In place names, however, it has at least tfour hree derived functions:

i) A narrow pass between high cliffs that thus resemble 石門 ("Stone Gates"; Mdn. shi-men), such as at
a) Shimen Village, Mudan Township (牡丹), Pingtung County, where Mt. Shimen (石門山; 370m) and Mt. Wuchongxi (五重溪山; 450m) tower over an accessible pass below that is only around 30m wide. Being easily defended, this was the site of Shimen Ancient Battlefield (石門古戰場) where in 1874 Paiwan warriors fought the punitive expeditionary force of Japanese following the Mudan Incident (牡丹社事件) of 1871 in which 54 Ryukyuan sailors were murdered by Paiwan Aborigines after they were shipwrecked nearby ... (more here).
b) Shimen Reservoir (石門水庫) in Fuxing District (復興), Taoyuan City, which similarly has two large rocks on either side of the Dahan River (大漢溪) where it exits from the Central Mountain Rance. Or used to, since the gap was dammed to create the reservoir in the late 1950s~early 1960s.

- - Shimen Reservoir site before construction of the dam showing the "stone gates" (photo from Wikipedia)

ii) A rock arch that creates a natural, erosion-formed "door /window" to the sea, such as the 石門洞 ("stone gate cave"; Mdn. shi-men dong) in Shimen District (石門), New Taipei City, the most northerly point of Taiwan proper.

- - Shimen Cave, New Taipei City (photo JYP)

iii) A coastal entrance to a place, that is, a harbor, such as Kinmen (金門; "Golden Gate / Harbor") or the nearby Xiamen (廈門; "Mansion Gate / Harbor") in Fujian Province, China.

iv) Its phonetic value of men in Mandarin or, more likely historically, mng / mui in Hoklo Taiwanese, such as in Sandimen Township (三地門; lit. "Three Earth Gate") in Pingtung County, which derived from a convoluted transliteration of the Paiwan name Timur, in which "ti" became 豬 (Hoklo: di; lit. "pig") and later 地 (Hoklo: de; "earth"), while "mur" became 毛 (Hoklo: mo / mng; "hair") and 門 (Hoklo: mng / mui; "gate").

One other interesting example is Luermen (鹿耳門; lit. "Deer Ear Gate") in Tainan, which probably represents a combination of iv) and iii), that is, an Aboriginal place name that sounded something like mng / mui (note, for example, the 17th-century Dutch spelling of "Lacquymoye "), which happened to be a harbor as well.

One possible example (the name's origins are not known for sure) of a place name with 門 having its original meaning of "door" is Neimen (內門) District of Kaohsiung City, which perhaps had a similar origin to Shimen Reservoir (above) with rocks protecting both sides of a river, but perhaps also derived from the "door" of a Buddhist scholar who brought eruidition to the Aboriginal territory early in the 18th century (see here).




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