2014 Manchu Forbidden City Daqing Gate 01

The

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

() was an imperial

Chinese dynasty Dynasties in Chinese history, or Chinese dynasties, were hereditary monarchical regimes that ruled over China during much of its history. From the legendary inauguration of dynastic rule by Yu the Great circa 2070 BC to the abdication of the ...

ruled by the

Aisin Gioro The House of Aisin-Gioro was a Manchu clan that ruled the Later Jin dynasty (1616–1636), the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), and Manchukuo (1932–1945) in the history of China. Under the Ming dynasty, members of the Aisin Gioro clan served as chi ...

clan of

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) a ...

ethnicity. Officially known as the Great Qing, the dynastic empire was also widely known in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

as China and the Chinese Empire both during its existence, especially internationally, and after the fall of the dynasty.

Earlier names

In 1616

Nurhaci Nurhaci (14 May 1559 – 30 September 1626), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Taizu of Qing (), was a Jurchen chieftain who rose to prominence in the late 16th century in Manchuria. A member of the House of Aisin-Gioro, he reigne ...

declared himself the "Bright Khan" of the ''Later Jin'' state (; Jurchen/Manchu: ''Amaga Aisin gurun'') in honor both of the 12–13th century Jurchen-led Jin dynasty and of his

clan (''Aisin'' being

for the Chinese (''jīn'', "gold")). The dynasty became known as the ''Later Jin dynasty'' by historians. His son

Hong Taiji Hong Taiji (28 November 1592 – 21 September 1643), also rendered as Huang Taiji and sometimes referred to as Abahai in Western literature, also known by his temple name as the Emperor Taizong of Qing, was the second khan of the Later Jin ...

renamed the dynasty ''Great Qing'' in 1636, which established its capital in Beijing in 1644. It soon completely conquered the

Southern Ming The Southern Ming (), also known as the Later Ming (), officially the Great Ming (), was an imperial dynasty of China and a series of rump states of the Ming dynasty that came into existence following the Jiashen Incident of 1644. Shun forc ...

Origin of the name Qing

The name ''Great Qing'' first appeared in 1636. There are competing explanations on the meaning of ''Qīng'' (lit. "clear" or "pure"). The name may have been selected in reaction to the name of the Ming dynasty (), which is composed of elements "sun" () and "moon" (), both associated with the fire element of the Chinese zodiacal system. The character ''Qīng'' () is composed of "water" () and "azure" (), both associated with the water element. This association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water. The water imagery of the new name may also have had Buddhist overtones of perspicacity and enlightenment and connections with the Bodhisattva

Manjusri Mañjuśrī (Sanskrit: मञ्जुश्री) is a ''bodhisattva'' associated with '' prajñā'' (wisdom) in Mahāyāna Buddhism. His name means "Gentle Glory" in Sanskrit. Mañjuśrī is also known by the fuller name of Mañjuśrīkumāra ...

. "Qing" is also the name of several rivers in Manchuria, at one of which Nurhaci won a key battle in 1619. It may also be possible to come from the Manchu name ''daicing'', which may have been derived from a Mongolian word that means "warrior".

The name China for the Qing

After conquering China, the Manchus commonly called their state ''Zhongguo'' (, lit. "Central State" or "Middle Kingdom"), and referred to it as ''Dulimbai Gurun'' in Manchu (''Dulimbai'' means "central" or "middle," ''gurun'' means "nation" or "state"). The emperors equated the lands of the Qing state (including present day Northeast China, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet and other areas) as ''Zhongguo'' in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, defining China as a multi-ethnic state, and rejecting the idea that ''Zhongguo'' only meant Han areas. The Qing emperors proclaimed that both Han and non-Han peoples were part of ''Zhongguo''. They used both ''Zhongguo'' and "Qing" to refer to their state in official documents. "Chinese language" (''Dulimbai gurun i bithe'') included Chinese, Manchu, and Mongol languages, and "Chinese people" (; Manchu: ''Dulimbai gurun i niyalma'') referred to all subjects of the empire. When the Qing conquered Dzungaria in 1759, they proclaimed that the new land was absorbed into "China" (''Dulimbai Gurun'') in a Manchu-language memorial. The Manchu-language version of the Convention of Kyakhta (1768), a treaty with the Russian Empire concerning criminal jurisdiction over bandits, referred to people from the Qing as "people from the Central Kingdom (''Dulimbai Gurun'')". The Qing became widely known internationally in English as "China" or the "Chinese Empire", with ''China'' being the standard English translation of ''Zhongguo'' or ''Dulimbai Gurun''. They were commonly used in international communications and treaties in addition to English-language

mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit information ...

and

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...

s etc. during the Qing.

List of names in English

Alternative names in English

;China :As a general term for the country. Applied to the Qing dynasty since the early Qing period. ;Chinese Empire :As a general term for the imperial state. Applied to the Qing dynasty since the early Qing period. ;Middle Kingdom :Translation of Chinese: , as a general term for the country. Applied to the Qing dynasty since the early Qing period. ;Qing Empire, Ching Empire, or Ch'ing Empire :Mostly used when specifically referring to the empire. The three spellings (Qing, Ching, Ch'ing) are various romanizations for the same sound (). ;Empire of the Great Qing :Translation of Chinese: . ;Great QingOur Great Qing: The Mongols, Buddhism, And the State in Late Imperial China, by Johan Elverskog :Translation of Chinese: , the "official name" in Chinese. ;Great Qing state :Translation of Chinese: or Manchu: ;Manchu dynasty :Used by some westerners, similar to the name "Mongol dynasty" for the

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fift ...

. Sometimes written as "Manchu Dynasty of China". ;Manchu empire :Used by some westerners including some

New Qing History The New Qing History () is a historiographical school that gained prominence in the United States in the mid-1990s by offering a wide-ranging revision of history of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China. Orthodox historians tend to emphasize the pow ...

scholars (alternatively rendered as "Manchoo empire" or "Mantchoo empire" in the 19th century). Also written as "Manchu empire of China". Additional names such as "Manchu Qing dynasty" or "Manchu Qing empire" are used for emphasizing the Manchuness of the Qing dynasty.

Historical names or romanizations officially used during the Qing dynasty in English

;Ta Tsing Empire :Appeared in certain treaties in English, using a different romanization than pinyin for the Chinese: part. ;Tai Ching Ti Kuo :The transliteration of Chinese: as appeared in some late Qing coins, using a different romanization than pinyin. ;China :Appeared in most treaties, official documents etc. ;Chinese Empire

Treaty of Nanking The Treaty of Nanjing was the peace treaty which ended the First Opium War (1839–1842) between Great Britain and the Qing dynasty of China on 29 August 1842. It was the first of what the Chinese later termed the Unequal Treaties. In the w ...

:Appeared in international treaties in English. ;Empire of China

Burlingame Treaty The Burlingame Treaty (), also known as the Burlingame–Seward Treaty of 1868, was a landmark treaty between the United States and Qing China, amending the Treaty of Tientsin, to establish formal friendly relations between the two nations, wit ...

:Appeared in certain treaties in English.

Other (unofficial) historical names in English

;

Cathay Cathay (; ) is a historical name for China that was used in Europe. During the early modern period, the term ''Cathay'' initially evolved as a term referring to what is now Northern China, completely separate and distinct from China, which ...

:An alternative name for China as appeared in some English-language publications. ;

Celestial Empire Celestial Empire (; "heavenly dynasty") is an old name used to refer to China, from a literary and poetic translation of the Chinese term ''Tianchao'', one of many names for China. Accordingly, in the 19th century, the name "Celestial" was use ...

:The translation of Chinese: (a name for

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

) as appeared in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the C ...

n and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country b ...

n mass media in the 19th century. ;Tartary Early European writers used the term "Tartar" indiscriminately for all the peoples of Northern Eurasia and referred to their lands as "Tartary". By the seventeenth century, however, largely under the influence of Catholic missionary writings, the word "Tartar" came to refer to the Manchus and the land they ruled as "Tartary." ;Tartar Chinese Empire :Appeared in some English publications in the 19th century. Also rendered as "Chinese-Tartar empire" or simply "Chinese empire". ;Tartar Chinese dynasty :Appeared in some English publications in the 19th century, or simply "Tartar dynasty (of China)" or "Chinese dynasty". ;Manchu Tartar dynasty :Appeared in some English publications in the 19th century. Also rendered as "Manchoo Tartar dynasty","Mantchoo Tartar dynasty", "Tartar-Manchu dynasty", "Tartar-Mantchoo dynasty", or simply "Manchu dynasty", "Manchoo dynasty" or "Mantchoo dynasty". ;Ta-tsing dynasty :Appeared in some English publications in the 19th century, using a different romanization than pinyin for the Chinese: part. Also rendered as "Tai-tsing dynasty".

Names in other languages within the Qing dynasty and contexts

Because the Qing dynasty was established by the

Manchu people The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) a ...

, a Tungusic people who saw themselves as heirs to both the

Son of Heaven Son of Heaven, or ''Tianzi'' (), was the sacred monarchical title of the Chinese sovereign. It originated with the Zhou dynasty and was founded on the political and spiritual doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. Since the Qin dynasty, the secula ...

and earlier multi-ethnic

empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

s, and because the empire had extended its control into

Inner Asia Inner Asia refers to the northern and landlocked regions spanning North, Central and East Asia. It includes parts of western and northeast China, as well as southern Siberia. The area overlaps with some definitions of 'Central Asia', mostly t ...

, the court commonly used

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...

Mongol The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group indigenous peoples, native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia, Buryatia Republic of the Russia, Russ ...

, Tibetan, and Uighur names for their realm. The Qing dynasty was established in Chinese as Great Qing (大清) in 1636, but other Chinese names containing the name "Qing" had appeared in official documents such as treaties, including ''Da Qing Guo'' (大清國, "Great Qing State"), ''Da Qing Di Guo'' (大清帝國, "Empire of the Great Qing"), and ''Zhong Hua Da Qing Guo'' (中華大清國, "Chinese Great Qing State"), in addition to the name ''Zhongguo'' (中國). In the Chinese-language versions of its treaties and its maps of the world, the Qing government used "Qing" and "''Zhongguo''" interchangeably. Apart from ''Zhongguo'', the Qing court routinely used other terms as well in referring to its state in Chinese, such as ''guochao'' (國朝, lit. "state dynasty"), ''wojie ''(我界, "our territory"), and ''wochao'' (我朝) or ''benchao'' (本朝, lit. "our dynasty"). But it treated these titles and ''Zhongguo'' as interchangeable. For example, the Chinese version of the 1689

Treaty of Nerchinsk The Treaty of Nerchinsk () of 1689 was the first treaty between the Tsardom of Russia and the Qing dynasty of China. The Russians gave up the area north of the Amur River as far as the Stanovoy Range and kept the area between the Argun River ...

used ''Zhongguo'' as the state title, but in a different version of the same treaty, it was replaced by the term "our territory" (''wojie''): "All of the land to the south of the Xing’an mountains and all branches of the Heilong River belong to our territory" (''wojie''). The Manchu term Dulimbai gurun is the standard translation for the Chinese terms ''Zhongguo'', ''Zhongyuan'', and ''Hua'' and appeared in official documents produced by the Qing court beginning in 1689, if not earlier. The Manchu name for the state was ''Daicing Gurun''. While the Manchurian name ''Daiqing'' sounds like a phonetic rendering of Chinese ''Dà Qīng'' or ''Dai Ching'', may in fact have been derived from a Mongolian word ", дайчин" that means "warrior". ''Daicing Gurun'' may therefore have meant "warrior state", a pun that was only intelligible to Manchu and Mongol people. In the later part of the dynasty, however, even the Manchus themselves had forgotten this possible meaning. Similar to in the Chinese language, ''Dulimbai Gurun'' (the Manchu term for "Zhongguo" or "China") is used alongside ''Daicing Gurun'' to refer to the Qing dynasty during the Qing. In the

Mongolian language Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and both the most widely spoken and best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residen ...

, the state was always known as "Чин улс" ''Ching ulus''. Other Mongolian traditions used different terms for this empire: "''Manj Chin uls''" (Manchu Qing State), "''Daichin uls''", "''Manj uls''", "''Chin uls''", "our Great Qing", "Emperor's state", whereas "Han territory" was termed "''Khyatad''" or "''Dundad uls''". However, unlike in Chinese and Manchu languages, there was no exact counterpart for the name "''Zhongguo''" or "''Dulimbai Gurun''" in Mongolian during the Qing. The traditional Mongolian name for China is "Хятад" ''Khyatad'', which only refers to the areas of native (Han) Chinese. Although the counterpart for the name "''Zhongguo''" or "''Dulimbai Gurun''" in Mongolian did appear as ''Dumdadu ulus'' since 1735 in the works of bannerman Lomi and Injannashi, both of them limited "''Dumdadu ulus''" to the area south of the

Great Wall The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic group ...

, essentially the same as the word "''Khyatad''" in meaning. Similarly, there did not exist a counterpart for the name "''Zhongguo''" or "''Dulimbai Gurun''" in the Tibetan language during the Qing. There are also derogatory names in some languages (mostly in Chinese and Mongolian) for the Qing, such as "манж Чин", "滿淸/满清" ''Mǎn Qīng'', as used by anti-Qing, anti-Manchu revolutionaries.

Names in other languages

Apart from the English name of "China" or the "Chinese Empire", it is also known in similar names in other western languages such as ''Chine'' in French, ''Китаем'' in Russian, and ''Sinici Imperii'' in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

, which are the standard translations for "China" or "Chinese Empire" in these languages. For example, in the Sino-Russian

of 1689, the first international treaty signed by the Qing, the term "Китайском" meaning "Chinese" was used to refer to the Qing side in the Russian version of the treaty, and the term "Imperium Sinicum" meaning "Chinese Empire" was used to refer to the Qing empire in the Latin version of the treaty. Sometimes the names for "Great Qing" also appeared in such treaties. For example, the term "Imperii Tai-tscim" meaning "Empire of the Great Qing" appeared in the Latin version of the

Treaty of Kyakhta (1727) The Treaty of Kyakhta (or Kiakhta),, ; , Xiao'erjing: بُلِيًاصِٿِ\ٿِاكْتُ تِيَوْيُؤ; mn, Хиагтын гэрээ, Hiagtiin geree, along with the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), regulated the relations between Imperial ...

along with "Sinenses" meaning "Chinese". In Japanese-language version of some treaties during the Qing dynasty, the

Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

for the ''Qing state'' (淸國, ''Shinkoku'') was also used,下関条約
/ref> although it is not found in Chinese-language version of treaties during the Qing dynasty (in Chinese version of the treaties the word for Great (大) always appeared before the word for Qing (淸).

References

Works cited

* * * * * {{Qing dynasty topics Qing dynasty Names of China

Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...