What's in a Name?

Back in 2010, I was living in a place called Taipei County. Now I am living in what is in English officially called New Taipei City. Did I move? No, it's just that a week before the end of 2010, what was once known as Taipei County (台北縣, a distinct entity from the city of Taipei, which in Chinese is known as 台北市 or Taipei City) was re-designated 新北市, which in Hanyu romanization is written as Xinbei Shi and literally translates as New North City (the old "north city" being Taipei, the name of which means "Taiwan North"). All of the smaller cities within Taipei County (essentially the suburbs of Taipei), became districts of this new city. Originally the new city was to be known in English as Xinbei City, based on the romanization of the Chinese, but the mayor insisted on "New Taipei City".

So what useful purpose did this change of names serve? None, really, except for political -- as a "special municipality" the so-called New Taipei City is equal in political status to the "special municipalities" of Taipei and Kaohsiung, as well as Taichung and Tainan, existing cities which were also given "special municipality" at the same time New Taipei City was created. In reality, New Taipei City is the same place it was as Taipei County, basically an urban extension of Taipei. As far as I am concerned, the renaming was basically pointless, and just means that I had to get used to writing my address differently.

This does not mean, however, that I think names don't matter. In many situations, they matter a great deal, and Taiwan is home to many examples of significant naming issues. In fact the nation itself is a good example. Officially, it is still known as "the Republic of China" after the Kuomintang (Nationalist) regime which ruled China until its defeat at the hands of the Communists over 60 years ago. Even though the actual territory ruled by "the Republic of China" since then has consisted of Taiwan and a few small outlying islands, both Communist-ruled China and a small but vocal pro-China minority in Taiwan strongly oppose any efforts to rename the country to something more logical like "the Republic of Taiwan", because they seemingly imagine that having "China" in the country's official name somehow keeps it more closely tied to China itself (of course the Chinese government does not officially recognize the name "the Republic of China" either, calling Taiwan "Taiwan, Province of China" in order to maintain the fiction that they rule Taiwan, but they still oppose in change in the name they don't recognize). A good analogy would be if Hawaii became split off from the continental United States but still insisted on calling itself "the United States of America", or if Sicily split from Italy but still called itself "the Republic of Italy".

This sort of political use of names has a long history in Taiwan (as it does elsewhere, but for today I will focus on Taiwan only). As far back as the Qing dynasty, the first China-based regime to rule parts of Taiwan, several Taiwanese cities had their names changed because the Qing government felt the new names would somehow encourage obedience on the part of Taiwan's restive population. For instance, Zhuluo (named for an aboriginal village) was changed to Jiayi (good and proper), and Banhsian ("half-line", also named for an aboriginal village) was changed to Zhanghua (translated by one scholar as "manifest the influence of the empire").

When the Kuomintang (KMT) came to Taiwan, they changed names throughout Taiwan to fit their ideology and political purposes. Practically every town and city in Taiwan has streets named Minsheng, Minquan, and Minzu (after Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People) as well as Zhongshan (after Sun Yat-sen himself) and Zhongzheng (after Chiang Kai-shek, the self-declared successor of Sun). There are even many streets called Jieshou, which means "long life to Chiang Kai-shek" (or Jiang Jieshi as he is called in Mandarin). A large number of street names in Taipei were renamed for cities and provinces in China, and many of the districts of the city were also renamed for political purposes. Thus there are Zhongshan and Zhongzheng districts, as well as districts with names corresponding to various concepts in KMT political ideology, like Datong. Even Taipei's most prominent mountain, Cao (Grass) Mountain was renamed by Chiang Kai-shek to commemorate Neo-Confucian scholar Wang Yangming. All of this renaming was done in an effort to promote the idea that Taiwan was closely tied to China.

In a very few cases, some streets and places have been renamed by governments headed by the more Taiwan-oriented DPP, but most of these rather absurdly ideological names remain in place, and efforts to change them often meet strong resistance from the KMT and its supporters. One reason they commonly bring up is that it costs a lot to change all of the street signs and addresses to conform to the new name. But if this is a valid reason for opposing any changes, then the same argument should apply to the recent renaming of Taipei County and other places. For my part, while I realize that it would be difficult to make wholesale changes in a short period of time, I would like to see all place names and street names in Taiwan depoliticized gradually, preferably by restoring the original names. While we shouldn't exaggerate the importance of names, they should as much as possible reflect reality, and they shouldn't be used as propaganda for outdated political ideologies. So while I'm willing to live with "New Taipei City", I'd like to get rid of all the "Zhongzheng" roads and such as soon as practicable.