Baiyue

Baiyue
Statue of a man, from the state of Yue
Chinese name
Chinese	百越
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Bǎiyuè Wu Romanization pah yuih Gan Romanization bak-yet Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Baak yuht Jyutping Baak3 jyut6 Canton Romanization Bag3 yüd6 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Pah-oa̍t Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC Báh-uŏk Pu-Xian Min Hinghwa BUC Beh-e̤̍h Northern Min Jian'ou Romanized Bă-ṳ̆e
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese	Bách Việt
Zhuang name
Zhuang	Bakyez

The Baiyue, Hundred Yue or Yue were various partly or un-Sinicized peoples who inhabited South China and northern Vietnam between the first millennium BC and the first millennium AD. In the Warring States period, the word "Yue" referred to the State of Yue in Zhejiang. The later kingdoms of Minyue in Fujian and Nanyue in Guangdong are both considered Yue states. Although Yue people had knowledge of agriculture and the technology of shipbuilding, Chinese writers depicted the Yue as barbarians who had tattoos, lived in primitive conditions, and lacked such technology as bows, arrows, horses and chariots.

The Yue were assimilated or displaced as Chinese civilization expanded into southern China in the first half of the first millennium AD. Many southern varieties of Chinese bear traces of substrate languages originally spoken by the Yue. Variations of the name are still used in the name of Vietnam, in Zhejiang-related names including Yue Opera, and in the abbreviation for Guangdong.

The modern term "Yue" (Chinese: or ; pinyin: Yuè; Cantonese Yale: Yuht; Wade–Giles: Yüeh⁴; Vietnamese: ; Zhuang: Vot; Early Middle Chinese: Wuat) comes from Old Chinese *wjat. It was first written using the pictograph "戉" for an axe (a homophone), in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (c. 1200 BC), and later as "越". At that time it referred to a people or chieftain to the northwest of the Shang. In the early 8th century BC, a tribe on the middle Yangtze were called the Yángyuè, a term later used for peoples further south. Between the 7th and 4th centuries BC "Yue" referred to the State of Yue in the lower Yangtze basin and its people.