Han immigration to Taiwan since the 17th century and changes in place names

0541181 - OÚ 2022 RIV DE eng C - Conference Paper (international conference)
Liščák, Vladimír
Han immigration to Taiwan since the 17th century and changes in place names.
Place Names and Migration Proceedings of the Symposium in Vienna, 6–8 November 2019. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2021, s. 85-103. Name & Place – Contributions to Toponymic Literature and Research, 9. ISBN 978-3-339-11844-8.
[GeoNames Symposium on Place names and migration. Vienna (AT), 06.11.2019-08.11.2019]
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : Place Names * Toponymy * Origin of names in Taiwan
OECD category: Linguistics

Early Chinese histories refer to visits to eastern islands that some historians later identify with Taiwan, since at least the 3rd century. Portuguese sailors, passing Taiwan in 1544, first jotted in a ship’s log the name of the island Ilha Formosa, meaning “Beautiful Island”. The name Formosa eventually replaced all others in European literature and was in common use in English in the early 20th century. Dutch and Spanish colonization opened the island to Han Chinese immigration. Han Chinese fishermen began settling in the Penghu Islands in the 13th century, but Taiwan’s hostile tribes and its lack of valuable trade products meant that few outsiders visited the island until the 16th century, when visits to the coast by fishermen from Fujian Province and by Chinese and Japanese pirates became more frequent. Major waves of Han immigration occurred in the 17th to 19th centuries and between 1945 and 1949. There were two major waves of Han immigration: from the Qing Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries and from the Republic of China’s continental territory after World War II (1945–1949). In Taiwan we can find traces of many language from the aboriginal to newly come. There are some differences between Northern and Southern Taiwan and adjacent islands. My paper brings some examples of changes of place names in Taiwan in the course of centuries.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0325653