From Takow to Kaohsiung

Lugang (鹿港), Changhua County

Lugang (鹿港; lit. "Deer Harbor") or 鹿仔港 (Hoklo: Lok-a-kang) as it was formerly written, with 仔 (Hoklo: ah) functioning as a suffix for single-syllable nouns, a role it does not have in Mandarin. Now something of a sleepy tourist town, Lugang was one of the top three cities* in Qing-dynasty Taiwan (before the harbor silted up and the town worthies decided the railway shouldn't go there). Nevertheless, the origin of its name is something of a mystery, wtih at least five competing derivations.

Before considering their relative merits, however, during the 17th century as Han-Chinese immigrants moved in to cultivate lands, often encountering conflicts with aborigines, each other, or with itinerant unmarried males. Before the establishment of towns and cities and other protective adminstrative features, settlers sought safety in numbers and so formed leagues known as 聯庄 (Mdn. lian zhuang; lit. "allied homesteads"). One early example in Lugang was formed around the homestead of a Mr. Hsu You-de (許祐德; from Zhangzhou in Fujian), for which the village became known as 許厝埔 (Hoklo: Ko-cu-bo; lit. "Hsu's home plain"), which gave rise to a 聯庄 league called the 許厝埔十二庄 (Kocubo Twelve Homesteads), which still comes together to this day, albeit in a ritual ceremony to guard deities' statues when they leave their home temple during festivals and parades.

Lugang (鹿港; "Deer Harbor"; or 鹿仔港) is said to derive from:
i) In the earliest days of Han-Chinese immigration, herds of deer were still widespread right down to the west coast, so settlers arriving at the harbor here would have seen deer, hence the name.
ii) Trade in deer skins was an important part of the economy, so Lugang was a "port" through which "deer" skins were exported.
iii) The headland here was shaped like a deer or deer's head.
All three explanations seem reasonable, but more likely are:
iv) Transliteration of the plains aborigne Babuza (巴布薩) ethnicity name of Rokau-an to Hoklo: Lok-a-kang.
v) It was rice rather than deer skins that were being exported. This was stored in square-shaped grain silos that were known as 鹿 ("deer").

Despite probably sounding like the least probable of all five explanations, this last is the one offered by the Lugang Township Office. Tsai et al. concur; Abe Akiyoshi prefers the transliteration of an aboriginal name.



*Lugang's former pre-eminence can be inferred from the phase 一府二鹿三艋舺 ("Firstly Fu", i.e. the "prefectural capital", today's Tainan; "secondly Lu", i.e. Lugang; "thirdly Mengjia", i.e. Bangka, today's Wanhua in Taipei City). (more details: here).



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