Hundred Yue

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 Hakka Pha̍k-fa-sṳ Pak-ye̍t 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 an ancient conglomeration of indigenous non-Chinese hill tribes who inhabited what is now Southern 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 were both considered Yue states. Although the Yue had an inchoate knowledge of agriculture and shipbuilding, Han dynasty Chinese writers depicted the Yue as tribal backward barbarians who had tattoos, lived in primitive conditions, and lacked basic technology as swords, bows, arrows, horses and chariots.

The Yue were gradually displaced and assimilated into Chinese culture as the Han empire expanded into what is now Southern China and Northern Vietnam during the first half of the first millennium AD. Many modern southern Chinese dialects bear traces of substrate languages originally spoken by the ancient Yue. Variations of the name are still used for the name of modern 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.