Is it Pekin or Beijing? Why?

Question

Some people say Beijing (capital of China); other talk about Pekin (French people, for instance).

When and why did Pekin become Beijing? How should it be written in other languages (italian, spanish, etc.)?

Answer 1

Officially it is Beijing.Peking is the name of the city romanized in Postal System Pinyin, and the traditional customary name for Beijing in English. The term originated with French missionaries four hundred years ago, and corresponds to an older pronunciation predating a subsequent sound change in Mandarin from [kʲ] to [tɕ]. ([tɕ] is represented in pinyin as j, as in Beijing.)

In China, the city has had many names. Between 1928 [1] and 1949, it was known as Beiping (北平; Pinyin: Beiping; Wade-Giles: Pei-p'ing), literally "Northern Peace".

The Communist Party of China reverted the name to Beijing (Peking) in 1949 again in part to emphasize that Beijing had returned to its role as China's capital. The government of the Republic of China on Taiwan has never formally recognized the name change, and during the 1950s and 1960s it was common in Taiwan for Beijing to be called Peiping to imply the illegitimacy of the PRC. Today, almost all of Taiwan, including the ROC government, uses Beijing, although some maps of China from Taiwan still use the old name along with pre-1949 political boundaries.

Answer 2

It's always been Beijing, just we've only had a better phonemic representation for the spelling since pinyin was adopted in China as the new romanisation. We called it Peking because that was the old way of writing it, I think not 100% sure, but we derived at Peking because of the Cantonese pronunciation of the word not the Mandarin, as in Cantonese Beijing becomes like 'buk-ging' which seems a little closer to the original Peking than in mandarin when it is pronounced 'bay-jing'.

Answer 3

Beijing is the standard spelling, for english and pinyin.
Pekin also means Beijing, just another way of speaking.

Answer 4

Bei Jing means Northern Capital in Chinese. The differences come from the first translators.

Remember that USSR was a close ally of China and their people did the first major translations. They use a Cyrillic alphabet. When China opened up its boarders with Nixon, other Westerners started to do their own. They used the Latin alphabet.

Some of the differences have to do with independent translators as well. It's hard to try to find one of our sounds to match a Chinese sound sometimes

Examples:

The Ruler of Wei in Romance of the Three Kingdoms is called both T'sao T'sao and Cao Cao.

Taoism and Daoism

Thirdly, there are over 40 dialects of Chinese and there can be minor discrepancies in how something is said. It could be possible that the Jing sounds more like King depending on the dialect.

Answer 5

People change the names of places all the time. Pekin was the old name for that city. It has now been replaced by the name Beijing. New York used to be New Amsterdam. Luxor, in Egypt used to be Thebes. Even whole countries have changed their names. It happens all the time. Change for the sake of change.

Answer 6

Before 1949, Beijing was known as Peking by the Western world. After 1949, the city's name returned to Beijing, as it is known today.

Answer 7

It's technically pronounced both as Beijing, or Peking....depending on which native Chinese you're speaking to and what their local dialect is.

See, even though Mandarin is the "official" language of China....there's also Cantonese as a Southern Chinese dialect....as well as misnomers like "Hunanese, Shanghainese, and so forth....(all localized city dialects.")

Answer 8

I think the people before me explained the case pretty well, so I'll just add that in Polish it's Pekin.

Answer 9

The Chinese language can be transliterated into Latin letters using one of two main systems: Wade-Giles and Pinyin. Wade-Giles is older and less phonetic. The government of the PRC adopted of the Pinyin system in 1979 (it dates back to 1958). There are other examples. For example, under Wade-Giles, it's Mao Tse-Tung, but under Pinyin it's Mao Zedong.

Beijing, the Pinyin spelling, is considered the better way to spell it.

Answer 10

All I know is that we call it Beijing in the US. I believe they call it Peking in China. No idea about the rest of the world.