Great Wall Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Chinese Place Names (3 Volumes)

Author: Dai Junliang et al. (Editor-in-Chief)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: July 1, 2005
Features: The Great Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Place Names of China is the largest and most authoritative ancient and modern place name reference book compiled after the founding of New China. The book contains over 60,000 entries and more than 10 million words, organized and compiled by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which oversees place name work, and published by Shanghai Popular Science Press. After years of painstaking effort by dozens of writing units and hundreds of authors, the book was officially published in July 2005. The content is divided into three main parts: ancient place names, old place names, and modern place names. Ancient place names include administrative divisions (such as prefectures, prefectures, prefectures, roads, and counties) and natural and cultural place names that existed before 1912, such as ancient regions, mountains, rivers, bridges, and ancient towns. This section was compiled by the Historical Geography Research Center of Fudan University. Old place names include the names of old counties, cities, districts, and regions established after 1912 but later abolished. This section was compiled by China Cartographic Publishing House. Modern place names include the names of provinces, municipalities, counties, townships, important towns, as well as natural and cultural place names such as mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, transportation, water conservancy, and famous scenic spots that existed before June 2004. This section was compiled by the Place Name and Division Administration Offices of civil affairs bureaus in various provinces and universities with geography departments.
Our great motherland is a vast and prosperous country with a long history. To truly understand it, one must first start with place names. Opening The Great Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Place Names of China, the first thing that catches your eye are the political map of China, the topographic map of China, and 34 political maps of provinces, municipalities, and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, accompanied by nearly 100 exquisite color photographs. Following this are extensive introductions to ancient and modern place names, with dozens of historical maps at the end, guiding us into the vast world of place names.
In 1931, the Commercial Press published The Great Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Place Names of China, but its content was outdated and simplistic, lacking information on modern place names, essentially making it a historical geography dictionary. The Great Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Place Names of China is a comprehensive collection of China's ancient and modern place names, rich in content, thorough in knowledge, meticulously compiled, and spanning both ancient and modern eras. In ancient and old place names, the dictionary includes almost all administrative divisions above the county level, with a special focus on the names of counties established during the Revolutionary Base Areas of the Land Reform Period and the War of Resistance Against Japan, as well as the Liberation Zones during the War of Liberation—something absent in all previous dictionaries. In modern place names, the dictionary provides comprehensive information on county and city names, including historical evolution, natural conditions, industry, agriculture, transportation, and famous scenic spots. It also includes Pinyin annotations for easily confused variant readings and dialectal characters, aligning with the standardization and normalization of place names. These features were not present in the 1931 edition.
The newly compiled The Great Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Place Names of China is comprehensive in its coverage, rich in content, and up-to-date in its data, filling the gap in China's ancient and modern place name reference books and holding significant academic importance. Administrative divisions at the county and township levels in China have historically undergone frequent changes, especially since the reform and opening-up in the 1980s, with hundreds of newly established cities and county-level cities and tens of thousands of new townships. General readers cannot possibly keep track of this information. The Great Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Place Names of China combines ancient and modern content, making it the largest, most up-to-date, and most comprehensive ancient and modern place name reference book in China. It provides convenience for readers both at home and abroad by adding temporal and spatial information to place names, serving as a comparative tool for ancient and modern names. This greatly facilitates communication and interaction among the people and promotes scientific research in academia, holding positive practical significance for China's coordinated economic and social development and modernization efforts.