Names
Xinjiang was previously known as Xiyu (西域) or Qurighar (غەربىي دىيار), meaning Western Region, under the Han Dynasty, which drove the Xiongnu empire out of the region in 60 BC. This was in an effort to secure the profitable Silk Road. It was known as Huijiang (回疆), meaning "Muslim Frontier," during the Qing Dynasty before becoming the province of Xinjiang, which literally means "New Frontier" or "New Border", in the 1880s.
The general region of Xinjiang has been known by many other names in earlier times including: 西域 (Mandarin: xiyu) = 'Western Regions', Chinese Tartary, High Tartary, East Chagatay, Mugholistan, Kashgaria, Altishahr ('the six cities' of the Tarim), Little Bokhara and Serindia. The name "Xinjiang", which literally means "New Frontier", was given during the Qing Dynasty.
Older English-language reference works often refer to the area as Chinese Turkestan, Sinkiang, East Turkestan, or Uyghuristan. More specifically, at times, the term East Turkestan only referred to the Xinjiang area south of the Tian Shan mountains, North of the Tian Shan was called Dzungaria (Zungaria).
Read more about this topic: Xinjiang
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Watt’s need of semantic succour was at times so great that he would set to trying names on things, and on himself, almost as a woman hats.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“I introduced her to Elena, and in that life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished, the exchange of a few words was enough to enable two totally dissimilar women to start calling each other by their pet names the very next time they met.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority ... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our “white mythology.” Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.”
—Ihab Hassan (b. 1925)