Ah! But which came first? Penang is Bin Cheng 檳城 in Mandarin, or betel nut city. Possibly the Chinese gave it that name, no?
HG
I was taught 檳as “bin” when I was in primary school.
Since the" three pigs" issue,I wont believe the MOE much,really. 
[quote]Feiren wrote:
But Taiwan’s Ministry of Education says it’s ‘bin’.
dict.moe.gov.tw/cgi-bin/dict/Get … ng=%C2b%B7}&GraphicWord=yes
This is the Guoyu standard.
Actually, Taiwan’s MOE says it is both:
[quote=“Kobo-Daishi”]Dear all,
According to the R.O.C’s Ministry of Education’s (中華民國教育部) Dictionary of Character Variants (異體字字典) there are two more variants:
and
[/quote]
I view these two variants as stylistic variants of 檳 rather than drastically different way of writing the same character. So if you only know 檳, the two variants above probably wouldn’t give you pause in a sentence while 槟 or 梹 will most likely do so.
Makes sense to me.