Names
Taiping Island (Chinese: 太平島; pinyin: Tàipíng Dǎo; literally "peace island") is named in honor of a Nationalist Chinese Navy warship which sailed to the island in 1946, which allowed China to assert a claim to the Spratly Islands in 1947. This name is favored by both Taipei and by Beijing. The island was previously called Huángshānmǎ Jiāo (黃山馬礁) or Huángshānmǎ Zhì (黃山馬峙) by Chinese fishermen.
One of the names used in English is Itu Aba Island, which has three different origins: one from the Malay for "What's that?" (spelled itu apa in the current orthography); or from Hainanese of Huángshānmǎ (黃山馬) - Widuabe. A folk etymology claims that the island was named after two Vietnamese maids (Tu and Ba) of a French Indochina official charged with mapping the Spratly Islands.
Vietnam calls the island Ba Binh (Chinese: 波平; Vietnamese: Đảo Ba Bình; literally "calm wave" or "calm sea"). The Philippines calls it Ligao (Ligaw/Ligao), meaning "lost" or "wild" island.
During the Japanese occupation of the island 1939-45, the name Nagashima (長島?, Long Island) was used.
Read more about this topic: Taiping Island
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa.... We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bought them; white people changed their names ... my maiden name is supposed to be Townsend, but really, what is my maiden name? What is my name?”
—Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977)
“We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority ... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our “white mythology.” Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.”
—Ihab Hassan (b. 1925)
“The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didn’t order any credit cards! We don’t spend what we don’t have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?”
—Sarah Louise Delany (b. 1889)