From Takow to Kaohsiung

Datong (大同) District, Taipei City

Located in west-central Taipei, with Zhongshan District (中山區), named after Father of the Nation, Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), to its east, and Zhongzheng District (中正區), named for former President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to the south, Datong (大同; lit. "Great Unity") looks to all the world like one of the most Han-Chinese appellations possible.

This impression is further reinforced by the knowledge that the expression 大同 derives from the Zhou-dynasty Book of Rites (禮記), one of the Confucian classics, and presents a utopian vision of a world in which everyone and everything exist in perfect peace. Sun Yat-sen made frequent reference to it, it even appears in the second line of the ROC national anthem: "...以建民國，以進大同" (to build the Republic, to advance Great Unity).

And yet, like Shilin (士林) and Beitou (北投) districts to its north, and Wanhua (萬華) District to the south, as well as, indeed, perhaps the majority of Taiwan place names, the name Datong ultimately derives from a pre-historic (that is, pre-colonization) indegenous language.

The northern part of today's Datong District was originally a Ketagalan plains aborigine community whose name was transliterated into Chinese as 巴浪泵 (Mdn. Balangbeng; Hoklo: ?, and romanized as Paronpon) and other variants. In late-18th-century documents this was also being written as 大浪泵 (Mdn. Dalangbeng, Hoklo Tōa-lông-pōng) and, by the middle of the 19th century, as 大隆同 (Mdn. Dalongtong).

During the Period of Japanese Rule (1895~1945), this was also written as 大龍峒 (Mdn. Dalongdong. In the postwar period after retrocession to ROC rule, perhaps because 峒 is a relatively obscure charaacter referring to a mountain in Gansu Province, but more so since Taipei's Confucius Temple (孔子廟) is located within this area, it was renamed Datong. That the temple is located on Dalong Street ( 大龍街) and is also known as 大龍峒孔廟 shows the continued existence and interaction of these earlier names.



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