Historically, neighboring states and peoples of China were often given exonyms or descriptions that were pejorative in nature. For instance, the first exonym for Japan from the
Han dynasty (206 BCE – 24 CE) was the Chinese
Wo or Japanese
Wa 倭 meaning "submissive; dwarf barbarian"; this was replaced by the
endonym 日本 (rìběn) by the 8th century. Many other historical exonyms took centuries to settle into common acceptance. In his
A Short Account of the Maritime Circuit, Geographer
Xu Jiyu (1795–1873) commented that when translating a foreign place name into Chinese "ten people will have ten different translations, and one person's translation will vary." This was due to, among other problems, the high number of homophones in Chinese. before it was changed in 1794 to the modern phonetic transcription 荷兰 (Hélán,
lit. "lotus orchid") by the
Qianlong Emperor via imperial decree. Some Chinese exonyms which are not obviously translations or transcriptions exist due to historical significance to Chinese speakers. For example, the names (Jiùjīnshān,
lit. "Old Gold Mountain") and (Xīnjīnshān,
lit. "New Gold Mountain") for
San Francisco and
Melbourne were given by Chinese migrants in the Californian and Victorian gold rushes in the 19th century. Countries had been founded or had gained independence after 1949 (the year
Kuomintang had exiled to
Taiwan after losing to the
Communist Party) often have different exonyms used in
mainland China (
PRC) and Taiwan (ROC) due to differences in official standards resulting from the split in government. while the Taiwanese exonym is (Yǒngzhēn). == List of notable exonyms ==