Names of Beijing

"Beijing" is the atonal pinyin romanisation of the Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese characters 北京, the Chinese name of the capital of the People's Republic of China.

The spelling Beijing was adopted for use within China upon the approval of Hanyu Pinyin on February 11, 1958, during the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress. It became obligatory for all foreign publications issued by the People's Republic on 1 January 1979. It was gradually adopted by various news organizations, governments, and international agencies over the next decade.

The Chinese characters 北 ("north") and 京 ("capital") together mean the "Northern Capital". The name was first used during the reign of the Ming dynasty's Yongle Emperor, who made his northern fief a second capital along with Nanjing (南京, the "Southern Capital") in 1403 after successfully dethroning his nephew during the Jingnan Campaign. The name was restored in 1949 at the founding of the People's Republic of China.

"Peking" is a spelling created by French missionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries. In De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas (1615), Matteo Ricci calls the city Pechinum. (The English translation gives Pequin.) "Peking" appears in A Description of the Empire of China (1735) by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde. These early spellings may represent pronunciation in the Nanjing dialect, which was used as a lingua franca at this time, or the various other southern Chinese languages (e.g., Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka) used by the traders of the port cities visited by early European traders. Peking was the English name of the city until the adoption of pinyin. However, it is still employed adjectivally in terms such as "Pekingese", "Peking duck", "Peking Man" and various others. The name remains in common and official use in many other languages.

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