English has a long habit of taking Chinese city names and twisting them into something unrecognisable. This is not translation. It is laziness preserved by time.
Here are twelve cities whose names English still refuses to say correctly. Every single one has a modern pinyin name that is simpler, more accurate, and already used by over a billion people. English is the one that needs to catch up.
Nanking → Nanjing
One of China’s four great ancient capitals. The Nanking Massacre is still the dominant search term in English, which means one of the most powerful cities in Chinese history is permanently associated with violence under a name it has not used in half a century. Nanjing is shorter. Nanjing is correct. Use it.
Chungking → Chongqing
The largest city in the world by administrative area. Over thirty million people live there. Not one of them calls it Chungking. The Ch- initial is a Wade-Giles relic from the nineteenth century. Chongqing is the name. Learn three syllables.
Tientsin → Tianjin
A port city of fifteen million people. The Tien- prefix is the same Wade-Giles fossil you find in Tienanmen. Tianjin is easier to say and matches what Chinese speakers actually call it.
Tsingtao → Qingdao
You know it from beer bottles. The Ts- at the start is impossible for English speakers to say without sounding like they are hissing. Qingdao is straightforward. The beer label will survive the change.
Mukden → Shenyang
A Manchu-era name that has zero connection to modern Mandarin. Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning province and home to over eight million people. Mukden is a ghostword from a map drawn by people who never visited.
Foochow → Fuzhou
Fujian province’s capital. The Foo- prefix is a phonetic guess from Portuguese sailors in the sixteenth century. Fuzhou is two syllables. Nobody will miss Foochow.
Swatow → Shantou
A major port in Guangdong. The Sw- prefix reads like a typo. Shantou is what locals call their home. The old spelling survives only in textbooks too lazy to update.
Hangchow → Hangzhou
Marco Polo called it the finest city in the world. He did not call it Hangchow. The city’s name has been Hangzhou since pinyin was standardised in 1958. English took another sixty years to mostly notice.
Chengtu → Chengdu
The panda capital. Chengdu has twenty million people and one of the fastest-growing economies in China. Chengtu is what happens when a British colonial officer in the 1880s tried to write down what he thought he heard. Chengdu is what the city actually sounds like.
Yangtze → Changjiang
Yangtze is not even a Chinese name. It is a corruption of Yangzi, which is a local name for one section of the river near Yangzhou. The Chinese name for the entire 6,300-kilometre river is Changjiang — the Long River. Calling it Yangtze is like calling the Mississippi the New Orleans Canal.
Kashgar → Kashi
A Silk Road city in Xinjiang. Kashgar is a Russian colonial spelling. Kashi is what Uyghur and Chinese speakers both use. The Russian empire is gone. So should its maps be.
Urumchi → Urumqi
The capital of Xinjiang. Another old spelling that English textbooks failed to update. Urumqi is three syllables and matches the pinyin. No one benefits from keeping the -chi ending except publishers who do not want to reprint.
Why this matters: These are not obscure villages. Together they represent over two hundred million people. When English clings to colonial-era transcriptions, it is not preserving history. It is preserving ignorance. Every one of these cities has a name in pinyin that is simpler, more phonetic, and actually used by the people who live there. English should catch up.