Chapter 9 Section 8 Kyushu and the emergence of the term "place name" in "Yu Gong" and other books

In the pre-Qin period, there were also two famous geographical works, namely "Yugong" in "Shangshu".Although there are as many as 1,100 place names recorded in the book, some of them are difficult to test, even bordering on absurd.Although there are only about 110 place names recorded, the place names recorded have a profound influence on the place names of later generations, and most of them can refer to where they are today. "Yu Gong" divided the territory at that time into nine parts, called Kyushu.The names of these nine states are Ji, Yan, Qing, Xu, Yang, Jing, Yu, Liang, and Yong.Later, Kyushu was considered to be an administrative division divided by Yuping Shutu.The name of Kyushu is also found in other books, such as "Erya" also mentions the name of Kyushu in "Shidi"; "Zhou Li" not only lists the name of the state, but also briefly describes it in the section "Zhou Fang". Mountains and rivers, residents and products, etc.; in the section "You Shilan" in "Lushi Chunqiu" compiled by Qin Tongyi not long ago, the names of the states are listed, and they are compared with other countries. Now the names of Kyushu in each book are listed. The comparison is as follows:

Among them, all the books in six prefectures are the same. The difference is that "Erya" lacks Qing and Liang states, Duoyou and Ying states; "Zhou Li" lacks Xu and Liang states, Duoyou and Bing states; "Lu Lan" lacks Liang states , Duoyouzhou.The narrations in different books are different. Taking Yanzhou as an example, "Yugong" said: "Ji River is Yanzhou", and "Erya" said: "Ji River is called Yanzhou".The river here refers to the Yellow River. In ancient times, the Yellow River turned northeastward in the northwest of today's Zhengzhou, and entered the sea near Tianjin today. A part of the Ji River has become the Yellow River today.Hedong refers to the east of the lower reaches of the Yellow River in ancient times, and they are all the same.Since some natural entities are used as the basis for demarcation, it is more reasonable to say that they are natural divisions.As for "Lu Lan" said: "Yanzhou, Weiye", "Jizhou, Jinye", "Xuzhou, Luye"

...In fact, Wei, Jin, Lu and other countries did not exist when "Lu Lan" was written, and it was not appropriate to say that they were political districts at that time.In this way, it is also easy to cause people to misunderstand, thinking that "Yugong" talks about the summer system, "Erya" talks about the commercial system, and "Zhifang" talks about the weekly system.It was late in the late Han Dynasty that the actual state became a political district.Later, Kyushu became the synonym for "National" and has been handed down. The place names recorded in "Yugong" can be roughly divided into three parts: the place names of human geographical entities, in addition to the above-mentioned Kyushu names of geographical divisions, there are three subordinate country place names, a total of 12; natural geographical entity place names, namely mountains and water, Including rivers, lakes, ocean names, 82 in total; 14 general place names.The place names of natural geographical entities account for the absolute majority.What deserves attention today is not only the number and number of these place names, but more importantly, the characteristics of these place names and their influence on later generations.

The general name "zhou" of the geographical division in "Yugong" evolved into the general name of the administrative division name of the centralized feudal state in the Han Dynasty.Among the 13 surveillance regions established by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, seven prefectures, namely Ji, Yu, Xu, Yan, Qing, Jing, and Yang, got their proper names from "Yu Gong".By the Eastern Han Dynasty, "state" began to become the general name of the administrative divisions used by the feudal society in China, but the level and scale of states in different dynasties were not the same.To this day, the proper names of Ji and Yu in Kyushu in "Yugong" are still the abbreviations of Hebei and Henan provinces, while Xu, Yan, Qing, Yang, and Jing are still the proper names of modern Chinese cities or regions.And many natural geographic entity place names have been used to this day.Mountains are Jieshi in Hebei, Dai, Meng, Yi, and Peiwei in Shandong, Tongbai in Henan, Taihang on the border of Shanxi and Hebei, etc.; waters are like Luo, Wei, Zi, Si, Wei, Donghai, and Nanhai. The fact that the place names of natural geographical entities accounted for the absolute majority in "Yugong" fully proves that ancient place names originated from people's production activities and human understanding of the environment, and deeply reflected the strong dependence of early human society on the natural geographical environment.

"Yu Gong" and other ancient texts are mostly written concisely, and some place names mentioned often lack necessary explanations. Therefore, many place names have caused many disputes among scholars for a long time.For example, does "Three Rivers" refer to the three sections of the Yangtze River, or the three downstream passages into the sea.Is Yunmengze one lake or a combination of two lakes, and where is its location and scope today?As for Heishui, Jieshi, etc., there were also different discussions later, and there was no consensus. In the pre-Qin period, in addition to the above-mentioned and "Yugong", "Guanzi", "Lushi Chunqiu", "Erya" and other treatises that appeared successively have records about place names.The records of place names in these works either focus on the discussion of geographical division, the principle of place name naming, explain the meaning and source of place names, or focus on discussing the use of words and place name classification and other issues.For example, "Erya" has articles closely related to place names, including "Shidi", "Shishan", "Shishui", "Shiqiu" and so on.

Of particular note is the emergence of the term "place-name" during this period. The term "place name" should be proposed for the convenience of classification and generalization after accumulating a large number of specific place names.The earliest document recorded is "Zhou Li·Xia Guan" (also known as "Zhou Guan" or "Zhou Guan Jing") written in the Warring States Period: "Bi [yuanyuan] Master, in charge of the place names of the four directions." See the term "place name" It appeared in China at least 2500 years ago.If it is considered that "Zhou Guan" records the official system of the Zhou Dynasty, the time when the word "place name" appeared should be moved up to the early Western Zhou Dynasty, about 3000 years ago.The "Gu Liang Zhuan" written in the Han Dynasty of our country also mentioned the term "place name", saying "眜〔meimei〕, the name of the place"; "Yue, the name of the alliance place".The emergence of specific place names and the term "place name" as features or geographical names has laid a foundation for the study of the origin and evolution of place names.