Elihu Doty (20 September 1809 – 30 November 1864) was an American
missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...
to China. He was responsible for the first textbook of
Southern Min in English. Along with
John Van Nest Talmage he is credited with the invention of
Pe̍h-ōe-jī
(; ; ), also sometimes known as the Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese and Amoy dialect, Amoy Hokkien.
Developed by Western missionary, missionaries ...
, the most common orthography used to write Southern Min, although some doubt remains as to the exact origins of this system.
Early mission
Doty arrived in
Batavia
Batavia may refer to:
Historical places
* Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands
* Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...
(now
Jakarta) in the
Dutch East Indies in 1836 and spent his first three years as a missionary there;
Azubah Caroline Condit was among those who accompanied him on his journey there.
His next station was
Borneo
Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and ea ...
, from 1839 to 1844, at which point he relocated to
Amoy
Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong' ...
(now Xiamen) in
Fujian
Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its cap ...
, China.
Mission in Amoy
It was while stationed in Amoy that Doty produced the ''Anglo Chinese Manual of the Amoy Dialect'' (1853), which was "the earliest existing textbook for a Southern Min dialect".
Publications
*
*
Notes
References
*
*
External links
Complete version of his Anglo-Chinese Manual
{{DEFAULTSORT:Doty, Elihu
Protestant missionaries in China
1809 births
1864 deaths
American Protestant missionaries
People from Berne, New York
Protestant missionaries in Indonesia
Missionary linguists
American expatriates in China
American expatriates in Indonesia