Names
The name "Yangtze", which is also spelled "Yangtse" or "Yangzi", is derived from the local name for a stretch of the lower Yangtze near Yangzhou.
"Yangzi" (Chinese: 扬子; pinyin: Yángzǐ) was the name of a village and site of an ancient ferry crossing, and "Jiang" (Chinese: 江; pinyin: Jiāng) is one of the Chinese words for river. In the 13th century, the famous Song Dynasty official, Wen Tianxiang penned a poem entitled Yangzi Jiang. Later, Western missionaries heard the name and applied it to the entire river.
Read more about this topic: Yangtze River
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)