Why is Hokkien known as Hokkien?

jilang · Post by **jilang** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:54 am

Hi all

I was thinking, even to non-Hokkiens the Hokkien language is known as "Hokkien" which is its name in the language itself. But Hokchew is known as "foochow" which is basically its name in Mandarin instead of in its own language and also Cantonese is known as that instead of its name in Cantonese. So why are there variations between what language the name of the language is known in by?

~Jilang

duaaagiii · Post by **duaaagiii** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:49 am

From Wikipedia:

from the Guangzhou article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou

Guangzhou is the capital and the sub-provincial city of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the People's Republic of China. The city is also known by an older English-language name, Canton, which is based on a French language transliteration of the name of the province in Cantonese.

from the Fujian article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian

The PRC side renders the name of the province in Hanyu Pinyin, yielding "Fujian", while the ROC side renders the name of the province in Tongyong Pinyin, Wade-Giles and Postal map spelling, resulting in "FuJian", "Fuchien" and "Fukien", respectively.

As for the term "Hokkien", you (jilang) said:

I was thinking, even to non-Hokkiens the Hokkien language is known as "Hokkien" which is its name in the language itself.

The English term "Hokkien" is really a Southeast Asian term, if I am not mistaken. "Fukien" was used in China up until it was replaced with "Fujian".

(By the way, the local language of Fuzhou/Hokchew is not Hokkien.)