Xujiahui - Name

Name

Xujiahui literally means "Xu's junction" - or, more precisely, "property of Xu family at the junction of two rivers" in Mandarin . The "Xu family" actually refers to the family of Xu Guangqi or Hsu Kuang-chi (1562-1633), China's most notable Catholic convert. Most of what is now present day Xujiahui was once the ancestral home of Xu Guangqi and his family. Baptized by famed Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, Xu Guangqi and his descendants donated large plots of land to the Catholic Church, including the site of the St. Ignatius Cathedral.

Pronounced in the Shanghainese dialect of Wu Chinese, it is called "zi-ga-wei". During the 18th century it was known by Shanghai's western residents as "Ziccawei" (English) or "Zikawei" (French) and is still listed in a number of contemporary guidebooks and literature as "Zikawei" or some variant thereof.