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.
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Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I come to this land to ride my horse,
to try my own guitar, to copy out
their two separate names like sunflowers, to conjure
up my daily bread, to endure,
somehow to endure.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Ideas about life organize perception; names of emotions organize sensations; rules of syntax organize thought. But pain comes on its own.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)