From Takow to Kaohsiung

Townships: Rural and Urban; 鄉 and 鎮

Focused as it is on the origins and meanings of Taiwan's place names, this blog is largely disinterested in the adminstrative division of local governments into counties, cities, towns, districts, vilalges and so on. Indeed, more so since every decade or two there is a seismic shift, such as in 2010 when Taipei County (台北縣), for example, was reclassified as a Special Municipality (直轄市) to be called New Taipei City (新北市; lit. "New Northern City"), and its urban and rural townships all became city districts (區; Mdn. qu).

Only occasionally are such changes of toponymic interest, such as when 安平鎮 (Mdn. Anping Zhen; lit "Peaceful Township"), then in Taoyuan County (now City), changed its name to 平鎮庄 (Mdn. Pingzhen Zhuang; lit. "Flat Garrison Village") during the Period of Japanese Rule (1895~1945).

鎮 (Mdn. zhen; Hoklo. tin), which in Taiwan is used to designate Urban Townships, largely derived from 街 (Jpn. gai, "town(s)") of the Japanese colonial era. The character 鎮 originally meant "to guard / garrison", and so perhaps derived from either:
i) the Zheng-family Tongning Kingdom (1662-1683) when Koxinga invaded southwestern Taiwan, ousted the Dutch, and sent his soldiers to live on farm-garrisons [MC: but these tend to have led to place names with 營 (Mdn. ying; "military camp"; e.g. Kaohsiung's Zuoying, or perhaps 屯 (Mdn. tun; "to station soldiers in the countryside"), though these seem to be a late transformation of 墩 (Mdn. dun); e.g.-- needs further clarification];
or ii) later in the Qing dynasty when Taiwan was something of a wild frontier, and intercommunal strife (Han vs. Han & Han vs. Aborigine & Aborigine vs. Aborigine) required the stationing of soldiers in rural areas to cut down on the endemic banditry.

鄉 (Mdn. xiang; Hoklo. hiong), is used to designate Rural Townships, and largely replaced 庄 (Jpn. jō, "village(s)") of the Japanese colonial era. The character 鄉 was originally a pictograph of two people facing each other, perhaps with a food vessel between them, and meant "two people facing each other". Later, either through i) phonetic borrowing or ii) semantic shift, it came to mean "village". (For those with a special interest in this type of thing, there are many more details here.)



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