Origin of the name 'Tianmu'

I wonder if any of you genuises out there can clear this up for me. I was told a while back of a novel derivation for the name of the area in Taipei known as Tianmu.

The story goes thusly (and it may well be urban myth):

Mainlander comes over, asks the name of the area (in Mandarin). Local doesn’t speak Mandarin, and so says thia*-b

The version I heard had a foreigner coming up to a local and asking, with the same results. This sounds like a more politically correct version of that.

The Chinese Wikipedia article on Tianmu says that the mispronunciation story is an urban myth. The name dates back to the Japanese period and originally referred to temple for Mazu (The Heavenly tian Mother mu). A well-known hot spring resort known as the Tianmu Hot Springs was built there before World War II and there was bus service from Taipei.

Interestingly, the Tianmu Mazu temple was built by a Japanese man who went on to found a new religion known as Mazuism (Tianmujiao). I haven’t been able to find any more information on this cult though.

I have heard the mispronunciation story many times with several different variations, and is a great example of why you should not take stories about the origins of customs and place names at face value. Still, the story is quite interesting and probably (as Poagao suggests) as more tod do with the feeling of local people about encroachments on their land by outsiders. Keep in mind that until after World War II Tianmu was well outside of Taipei and there were fairly extensive rice paddies there until the early 1990s.

Thanks for that, Feiren. I’d checked the English article but didn’t think to look at the Chinese one. While I was on there I had look at the article on Kaohsiung - the origin of that city’s name is pretty interesting. I’d seen it labelled as ‘Takou’ 打狗 on old maps and always wondered why. For anyone who’s interested, the progression went like this:

  1. Aboriginal name Takau (bamboo grove)
  2. Mandarin transliteration of this became 打狗 (Dăgŏu; ‘beat the dog’)
  3. The Japanese arrived and thought ‘beat the dog’ was uncouth, used the original pronounciation transliterated into Japanese ‘taka-o’ which was written 高雄 (great hero) in Kanji, which was a much more acceptable reading to them. The locals read the characters with Taiwanese pronunciation - 'Ko-hi

[quote=“Taffy”]

  1. Aboriginal name Takau (bamboo grove)
  2. Mandarin transliteration of this became 打狗 (Dăgŏu; ‘beat the dog’)
    /quote]

The Chinese Wikipedia’s entry for Kaohsiung says that the transliteration was into Taiwanese, not Mandarin. That seems more likely given that durring the Qing settlement virtually no one spoke Mandarin in Taiwan.

Place names in Taiwan are fascinating and a great way to learn about Taiwanese history.

[quote=“Feiren”][quote=“Taffy”]

  1. Aboriginal name Takau (bamboo grove)
  2. Mandarin transliteration of this became 打狗 (Dăgŏu; ‘beat the dog’)
    [/quote]

The Chinese Wikipedia’s entry for Kaohsiung says that the transliteration was into Taiwanese, not Mandarin. That seems more likely given that durring the Qing settlement virtually no one spoke Mandarin in Taiwan.[/quote]

Yeah, I wondered about this, but I was thinking the Taiwanese would be Ph

Good place for Kaoshiung background
takaoclub.com/index.htm

[quote]T h e T a k a o C l u b

The Takao Club website presents a collection of fully illustrated explorations into the history and culture of Taiwan (Formosa), with particular focus on Takao (Takow, Kaohsiung). The site includes pages on Robert Swinhoe, Father Fernando Sainz, Mona Rudao, Lin Shao-mao, the ShaoChuanTou area of Kaohsiung, as well as on Camphor, Opium, Foxes and Betel Nuts.[/quote]

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Good place for Kaoshiung background
takaoclub.com/index.htm[/quote]

Interesting link there TC, thanks!

As Feiren said, definitely an urban myth, and I have a source:

Sequent Occupance and Place Names
Ciao-Min Hsieh
in China’s Island Frontier (Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan)
edited by Ronald G Knapp
SMC Publishing Taipei 1980

“T’ien-mu, located north of Taipei city, was named Tenbo by the Japanese to commemorate a deity”.

Most of the place names in Taipei that don’t make a proper word in Chinese are probably from Japanese names (with a few from Aboriginal).

Brian

There are a lot of urban myths and folk etymologies like this.

Taipa, an island in Macao known as Tamchai by the locals, is reputed to originate as follows: The Portuguese asked a local shop-owner what the name of th island was. They heard the word “nome” (name) and thought they were asking if they had “nuomi” (sticky rice). They responded “dai ba” (“a lot”), and the name stuck.

Am I confusing TienMu with Neihu? The version I heard was that the foreigner said, “Whats here?” and the local said, “Nothing here.” But like I say, my Chinese is woeful.