Yellow River - Name

Name

Early Chinese literature refers to the Yellow River simply as 河 (Old Chinese: *C.gˤaj), a character that has come to simply mean "river" in modern usage. The first appearance of the name 黃河 (Old Chinese: *N-kʷˤaŋ C.gˤaj; Middle Chinese: Hwang Ha) is in the Book of Han written during the Western Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 9). The epithet "yellow" describes the perennial color of the muddy water in the lower course of the river, arising from loess being carried downstream.

One of its older Mongolian names was the "Black River", as it runs clear prior to its entry onto the Loess Plateau, but the current name of the river among Inner Mongolians is Ȟatan Gol (Хатан гол, "Queen River"). In Mongolia itself, it is simply called the Šar Mörön (Шар мөрөн, "Yellow River").

In Qinghai, the river's Tibetan name is "River of the Peacock" (Tibetan: རྨ་ཆུ།, Ma Chu; Chinese: 玛曲, 瑪曲, Mǎ Qū).