Names
Kinmen was first named Jīnmén (金門; lit, "golden gate") in Chinese 1387 when the Hongwu Emperor of China's Ming Dynasty appointed a military officer to administer the island and protect it from wokou (pirate) attacks. The name, pronounced Jīnmén in the official Mandarin Chinese and Kim-mûi in the native Zhangzhou dialect of Hokkien Minnan. The various names used in English for the islands derive from these name.
Quemoy is the name for the island in English and in many European languages. It likely began as a Portuguese transcription of the Minnan (Hokkien) Zhangzhou dialect pronunciation of the name, Kim-mûi. This form of the islands' name was used almost exclusively in English until the late 20th century and is still used widely in current English-language contexts that involve historical coverage. For example, current works that deal with the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises (the Quemoy Incident) when the islands received prominent worldwide news coverage as "Quemoy" still use this form. In addition, the former National Kinmen Institute of Technology was renamed National Quemoy University in 2010. Kinmen scholar Wei Jian-feng advocates the use of "Quemoy" to better connect the island to "international society or achieve more recognition in the world".
Kinmen is a more recent transcription based on the Chinese Postal Map Romanization of the Republic of China (where k is used instead of ch or j for the initial sound in Wade-Giles Chin-men or pinyin Jīnmén). With some exceptions, this form is used in most current English-language contexts on Kinmen and in Taiwan as a whole. Entities such as the county government, the islands' airport, and the national park use this spelling.
Chin-men is the Wade-Giles romanization form of the island's name and appears on some maps using that as their standard.
Jinmen is the Hanyu Pinyin form of the island's name used especially in sources from the People's Republic of China. The Kinmen County Government and ROC central government have adopted Hanyu Pinyin as their standard romanization, such as for names of townships within Kinmen County, but this does not apply to the name of Kinmen itself.
Read more about this topic: Kinmen
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