Keelung ("chicken coop")
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When I first learned the name of this important port city in northeastern Taiwan, I was told that it was originally written with characters that mean "chicken coop; hen coop; rooster cage", Taiwanese "Kelang" (POJ Ke-lâng/Koe-lâng). I found that to be rather droll and thought that it was probably derived from the cramped geological formation of the hilly city. The actual story of the city's name, which has come back into the news today, is quite different, as I will explain below the break.
Keelung pranked by name change on Google Maps
Prankster used characters for 18th century rendering of Keelung's name
Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News (Oct. 24, 2025)
DeAeth gives a rundown of what happened:
Keelung was pranked this week when an anonymous internet user changed the Mandarin characters for the city’s name on Google Maps.
The prankster changed the city’s name to the way it was written historically, using the characters “jilong” (鷄籠) or “chicken coop,” rather than the modern characters for Keelung (基隆). Keelung City Government, which became aware of the issue on Oct. 22, sent a letter to Google requesting a correction, reported LTN.
There have been several reports of schools and landmarks around Taiwan having their names altered on Google Maps by pranksters in recent months. This marks the first time a municipal district or government organization was targeted.
Here's a more detailed account of the history of the city's name:
While it has been proposed that this name was derived from the local mountain that took the shape of a rooster cage, it is more likely that the name was derived from the first inhabitants of the region, as are the names of many other Taiwanese cities.* In this case, the Ketagalan people were the first inhabitants, and early Han settlers probably approximated "Ketagalan" with Ke-lâng (Ketagalan: ke- -an, "domain marker circumfix" + Taiwanese Hokkien 儂／人; lâng; 'person'), with the noun root and the suffix part of the circumfix replaced together with the common Taiwanese Hokkien term for people, shortening the circumfix to just its prefix part.
[VHM: Before the Han settlers adopted this disyllabic Sinitic approximation of "Ketagalan", the Dutch had already appropriated a fuller transcription of the name.]
In 1875, during the late Qing era, a new official name was given (Chinese: 基隆; pinyin: Jīlóng; lit. 'base prosperous'). In Mandarin, probably the working language of Chinese government at the time, both the old and new names were likely pronounced Gīlóng (hence "Keelung").
Under Japanese rule (1895–1945), the city was also known to the west by the Japanese romanization Kiirun.
In Taiwanese Hokkien, the native language of the area, the city is called Ke-lâng. In Hanyu Pinyin, the most common romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, the name of Keelung is written as Jīlóng (the shift from g [k] to j [t͡ɕ] is a recent development in the Beijing dialect; see Old Mandarin). [VHM: the palatalization of the velars]
[*Including the name of Taiwan itself, as I have often pointed out on Language Log and elsewhere, which does not mean "Terrace Bay" (Táiwān 臺灣) as the characters seem to indicate, but derive from the ethnonym of an indigenous / aboriginal people) — do a Google search for: victor mair language log taiwan terrace bay — see especially n. 61 here]
As AntC said when he sent me this news, "Might we take a wild guess at where these 'anonymous' pranksters are based?"
Selected readings
- "Japanese readings of Sinographic names" (9/26/18)
- Mair, Victor (2004), "Laurent Sagart. The Roots of Old Chinese" (PDF), Sino-Platonic Papers, 145 (August, 2004) 17–20.
[Thanks to AntC]
wgj said,
October 26, 2025 @ 9:24 am
Criminology 101 suggests that the most likely perpetrator is the one closest to the victim – so in this case, my not-so-wild guess would be that the prankster is based in Taiwan.
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 26, 2025 @ 9:41 am
KE + LÂNG + AN is a sexy etymology — and most def. in line with the spirit of the (current) multi-party incarnation of Nationalist China, esp. if presented as KE + 儂 + AN. It's hard to say anything intelligent about 儂 w/o sounding cynical, but I mean it when I say KE-人-AN is sexy. There's not just much evidence for it, unfortunately. Even the idea of a "Ketagalan people" was to some (?) extent an "Inō Kamori-ism" (i.e., the educated invention of a modern Japanese anthropologist), not well supported in what we know of the peoples of 1600s N. Formosa, which is considerable. What I know about all that myself is not considerable, though, so I'll leave that at that.
The sexy KE-人-AN theory ignores other facts. While the city is called KELÂNG in the city proper and in most of Taioanese at large, it is called KOELÂNG by a sizable minority, incl. in the hills just inland, and in the long-time sister port of Tamsui. Unlike much of the dialect variation in Taioanese, KELÂNG-KOELÂNG patterns with the relative contribution (in each microdialect) of old-country Hoklo dialects, which means it's unlikely to have been one of the cases where name X in an Austronesian language was locally borrowed into Hoklo as Y and written with certain sinographs, then borrowed into off-locale Hoklo dialects via sinograph as Z.
Rather, the written form 鷄籠 = 圭籠 was probably involved in the naming of the city from the early days of the name. There's at least one other 雞籠 in the world, in Korea. It seems possible, or likely, that an existing place name was recycled, by seafarers, onto a place that may have been associated with an Austronesian name or expression that sounded like it.
Multi-disciplinary approaches are needed for questions like this, but something seems to militate against that in Formosa studies.
BTW, "changing" the name to 鷄籠 may not have been a prank at all. That's exactly what the city is called in Taioanese — it's not called 基隆 (*KILIÔNG). Why was it labeled 基隆 in the first place? (I swear I didn't do it, though.)
Jonathan Smith said,
October 26, 2025 @ 12:03 pm
This place (and/or some related place[s]) could have been literally called "Chicken Coop" by Hoklo settlers from the "very beginning" and still have been based however loosely on a native name or names. This is probably the most likely scenario and it probably happened a lot. There must be many "hidden native etymology" parallels in e.g. the U.S., though the best I can do for now is "Mystic" (Connecticut), "derived from the Pequot term 'missi-tuk' describing a large river whose waters are driven into waves by tides or wind" (Wikipedia).
There are a number of similar-looking demo-toponyms in the region that should probably be explained together (Kavalan etc…), but I defer to the Austronesianists…
Bob Ladd said,
October 26, 2025 @ 12:12 pm
@ Jonathan Smith –
Thanks for the New England analogy. I presume that the Mystic River in Boston (which is indeed a wide river affected by tides) comes from the same Algonquian root(s). It never occurred to me to wonder about that.
Joe said,
October 26, 2025 @ 6:09 pm
Is it unusual to refer to "Mandarin characters", given Mandarin is only one of many spoken languages that share the same written Chinese language? This seems like something Taiwan News would have already considered with expert judgment.
Philip Taylor said,
October 26, 2025 @ 6:27 pm
Although I completely understand your reservations concerning the use of the phrase "Mandarin characters", Joe, I would not agree with your analysis that "many spoken languages […] share the same written Chinese language" — they do indeed often share the same script, but that does not (IMHO) imply that they also share the same written language.
AntC said,
October 26, 2025 @ 7:06 pm
@wgj Criminology 101 suggests …
Obviously there must be a need to keep GMaps up to date with changes to roading layout, new subdivisions, (and in Taiwan particularly recently) road closures because of storm damage). Equally obviously (I would have thought) Google wouldn't just allow any passing 'prankster' to make significant changes like City naming — I'd expect that to need checking with municipal authorities — unlike, say, a restaurant's opening hours.
My speculation:
* City names are not something you'd crowdsource like Google search results in general.
* Google would have protections against what is in effect defacing their own website.
* So Google would at least be able to track who made such changes, when.
* Then it must be somebody within their 'dedicated team'.
wikip has an entry covering Google Maps. wrt its Chinese language(s) content, see their section on 'Google Maps in China', note on the naming of 'Scarborough Shoal' and 'West Philippine Sea'. (I don't get a sense of how much that is talking about the English language names vs Mandarin; nor mainland vs Taiwan.)
OTOH last year some schools in Taiwan and Hong Kong got their names changed by pranksters that turned out to be local students. (The connection would be in using Trad characters, but liaison between _students_ in Taiwan and HK?? Actually students, or malefactors posing as students?)
@Joe "Mandarin characters"
Fair question. Taiwan News' copy is essentially translated from their Mandarin language news sites — you can see the link within the article. Their English is usually pretty good, but there are often odd phrasings. (And as with news media everywhere these days, they can't afford 'expert judgment' nor proof readers.)
AntC said,
October 27, 2025 @ 1:43 am
Well I'll be …
Looking at Google maps for some completely other purpose, in 'Bream Bay', Northland, NZ, there's a 'Hen island'. It's quite common for GMaps to include the Māori name in parens (or v.v.) but "(pulo sa Awstralya)" is not Te Reo. "pulo" is island in Tagalog?
Then Google search that phrase (or similar) brings up several islands in Australia, apparently from Cebuan-language domains. So the 'pranksters' in the Philippines trying to keep GMaps' Scarborough Shoal under control have got a bit carried away?