Etymology
Toa Payoh is a Hokkien language reference to "big swamp" (toa is "big" and payoh means "swamp"). The Malay word for swamp is paya. The reference indicates the large swampy area that preceded the later development of Chinese market gardens in this area.
It is the Chinese equivalent of Paya Lebar, which translates to, big swamp land. To older generation Chinese, Toa Payoh is known as ang change shan (or anxiangshan) or "burial hill" because of the cemetery located in the area.
J.T. Thomson, a government surveyor, refers to Toa Payoh in his 1849 agricultural report as Toah Pyoh Lye and Toah Pyoh. Whampoa or Hoo Ah Kay had an orange garden here that Johnson visited. The neglected garden which Whampoa had bought was converted into a tasteful "bel-retiro" with its avenues, front-orchard, hanging gardens, Dutch walls, bamboos and orange trees, shrubs, stags and peafowls, its aviary and menagerie and artificial curiosities of horticulture.
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