You know where you are with province names

Titles of Chinese regions are mostly based on logic and geography

If there is one quality a good administrator of an empire ought to have it's knowing where everything is. In early history, the tribes that were the forerunners of the Chinese civilization called their homeland "the Central Plains" - defined as the plains in the "center" of the various tribes that surrounded them.

This name later gave rise to the term zhōngguó, or "Central Kingdom", the literal translation of the name of said civilization.

The names of many Chinese administrative regions today retain helpful references to directions and geographic features to let you know roughly where they are, for instance, "south of the river," or "north of the river".

Easy: Henan (河南, Hénán), Hebei (河北, Héběi), Hunan (湖南，Húnán), Hubei (湖北，Húběi), Shandong (山东, Shāndōng), Shanxi (山西, shānxī)

First, brush up on your cardinal directions: 东(dōng, east), 西 (xī, west), 南 (nán, south), 北 (běi, north).

河 (hé) refers to "river", 湖 (hú) is "lake", and 山 (shān) is "mountain(s)". But actually, in ancient times, 河 was the exclusive name of the Yellow River, the major river of consequence in northern China, whereas your run-of-the-mill tributaries, streams, channels, conduits and waterways would have all been referred to as 川 (chuān, as in Sichuan, "four rivers"). That more or less gives away the answer to the first pair of provinces: Henan and Hebei are regions (and later provinces) north and south of the Yellow River. Hunan and Hubei are likewise north and south of the lake, which in this case is Dongting Lake.

The mountains referred to in Shandong and Shanxi, on the other hand, are open to some dispute. They could refer to the Taihang Mountains, which are located between Shanxi and Hebei province (but not present-day Shandong), Xiao Mountain in present-day Henan province, or Mount Hua in Shanxi. It could also refer to all of these mountains, as up until the Qing dynasty "Shandong" referred to a much larger region roughly comprising the plains around the eastern section of the Yellow River, east of the "mountains," generally speaking, that were found north of the Central Plains.

Moderate: Guangxi (广西, Guǎngxī), Guangdong (广东, Guǎngdōng), Jiangxi (江西, Jiāngxī)

These province names also include cardinal directions, but no clear geographic marker. The 广 (guǎng) in Guangxi Autonomous Region and Guangdong province literally means "wide", but the name of the region traces itself to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in the 2nd century BC. During his reign, the Han conquered the southern kingdom of Nanyue

(南越, also known as Southern Yue), focused around the present-day city of Guangzhou. According to ancient historians, at this time Emperor Wu said: "初开粤地宜广布恩信 (as we develop the Yue region, we must widely broadcast favor and trust)." The characters 广 and 信 quote gave rise to the name to the new regional capital Guangxin, and the entire region of present-day Guangdong and Guangxi came to be called "Guangzhou" after this city. In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the road leading to this region had two branches called "Guangxi South Road" and "Guangdong South Road," which gave the two present-day administrative regions their names.

Jiangxi also has many confusing explanations. In ancient times the character 江 (jiāng), for river, belonged like 河 exclusively to one river, which in this case is the Yangtze River (长江, chángjiāng). Since the Yangtze actually flows through present-day Jiangxi province, it would make sense that Jiangxi refers to the western part of the Yangtze, except Jiangxi is actually located quite far east. Some other explanations are that the 江 actually refers to the 赣 (gàn) River, another major river in the province.

The real answer is that Jiangxi is an abbreviation: for 江南西部 (jiāngnán xībù), or "western part of the Jiangnan region", the name given to the geographic and cultural area immediately south of the Yangtze.

Hard: Shaanxi (陕西, Shǎnxī), Yunnan (云南, Yúnnán), Hainan (海南, Hǎinán), Tibet (西藏，Xīzàng)

Like Jiangxi, the names of these provinces and regions also lack a direct counterpart. However, unlike Jiangxi, the reason here is that these names all refer to former Chinese border regions and are named according to their cardinal direction relative to some description of China's borders, highlighting their status "outside" the ancient definition of the homeland; their "counterpart" would simply be existing Chinese regions that already had names or more broadly, China itself.

Shaanxi, currently home to Xi'an, the former imperial capital of Chang'an, was integrated into the central Chinese civilization early on. However, the name of the region comes from its location west of the Shaan Plateau (陕塬, shǎnyuán) in present-day Shaan county, Henan province, and was decidedly a frontier region of the Western Zhou Dynasty (c.11th century-771 BC), which was based around the Central Plains. In around the 9th century BC, the region became the seat of the Qin Kingdom, one of the Warring States, which was considered by the other states to be a western border-region upstart beneath their notice. As we now know, the Qin exploited this advantage and conquered all the other states to become the Qin Empire, the first Chinese empire, and with this the former frontier of Shaanxi and the Qin capital of Chang'an became the new Chinese heartland.

The names of Yunnan and Hainan both connote places that, in ancient times, were really, incredibly, unimaginably far away. Yunnan literally means "South of the Clouds", and that is the actual origin of the name: it was the mysterious region south of the cloud-shrouded mountains that marked the southwestern boundary of the ancient Chinese civilization, but a more colorful legend states that one day, Emperor Wu of Han saw iridescent clouds on top of a mountain and ordered his servant to follow it. When the servant reported back that he found land south of those clouds, Emperor Wu named it "Yunnan".

Hainan, on the other hand, comes from Hainan Island and the name means "South of the Sea", and was among many folk names that the island used to go by in ancient times including "southern extremity" (南极, nánjí), "edge of the sea" (海角, hǎijiǎo), and "edge of the sky" (天涯, tiānyá).

"Xizang", finally, has several explanations: the character 藏 (zàng) itself is said to be a transliteration of a Tibetan word for the region populated by the Tibetan ethnic group, which also included present-day parts of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces. "Xi", however, comes from a slightly different origin, as part of the general name that Chinese empires since the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) gave to their western border regions (西域, xīyù).

Expert level: Guandong (关东, Guāndōng); all provincial abbreviations

Guandong, not to be confused with Guangdong, was the old name for the northeastern region of China, which in English today is still called "Manchuria" (a name first created by French missionaries). The name referred to the region's position east (but mostly north) of the passes on the Great Wall, through which the Manchu rulers of the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912) eventually entered China and integrated the region into the Chinese homeland.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

The World of Chinese