I recently upgraded some maps in Chinese that cover the area of Siam in the eighteenth century. In doing so, I did not update what we can know about the placenames on those maps as, at the moment, I simply don’t have the time.
Instead, I shared information about these names that is included in volume 1 of the 2-volume work: Chen Jiarong 陳佳榮, et al., eds., Zhongguo lidai hailu zhenjing 中國歷代海路針經 [A Collection of Maritime Routes and Rutters of Imperial China], but said to consult their explanations of the placenames in the maps with caution, as they are at times inaccurate, but at other times, it is simply that there is more that we can know.
I am going to discuss here an example of the latter case.
In the first of the three maps, the “Map of the Situation of the Jiaozhi Central-Southern Peninsula,” the following three places are mentioned in a north to south direction: Wangge Citadel 望閣城, Wangzhaopi 望昭丕, and Xianluo [Siam] Harbor 暹羅港口.
Chen at al. explain these names as follows:
- Wangge Citadel = “It should indicate Mangu Citadel (Bangkok)” [應指今曼谷城(Bangkok)],
- Wangzhaopi = “It should be in today’s Bang Sao Thong, a district under Chunwuli (Mueang Chon Buri) Province” [應在今春武里府直轄縣(Mueang Chon Buri)府的Bang Sao Thong],
- Xianluo Harbor = “At the mouth of the Meinan River in the Gulf of Siam, in the Beilan area” [在暹羅灣的湄南河出口，位於北欖一帶].
The first thing to note is that there is already quite a bit of Thai in this Chinese. Mangu is literally “Bangkok” (บางกอก); Chunwuli is “Chonburi”; Meinan is “mae nam” (แม่น้ำ), the Thai word for river, and it here indicates the Maenam Chao Phraya River that flows past Bangkok to the sea; and Beilan is “Paknam” (ปากน้ำ), meaning “river mouth,” and is a reference to the area around what is now Samut Prakan where the Maenam Chao Phraya enters the Gulf of Thailand.
At the same time, there is also Thai in the terms from the map, but Chen et al. didn’t/couldn’t see this.
To start with “Wangge Citadel,” it’s not that “It should indicate Mangu Citadel (Bangkok).” Instead, it literally is the same name!
In Hokkien (Southern Min), Wangge would be pronounced something like “Bang-koh,” and Mangu would be “Ban-kok.” These are the exact same name, written in two different ways.
As for that name, it is well known that the “bang” (บาง) in “Bangkok” means something like a “waterside settlement.” That being the case, since we have a second name, Wangzhaopi that begins with the exact same character as the name for Bangkok, wang 望, I would say that chances are pretty darn good that this is another “bang” or “waterside settlement.”
So, what then could the following two characters, zhaopi 昭丕, refer to? If you read historical communications in Chinese between Siam and China or Vietnam (like in the image above), you will see that this term is used to replicate the Thai term, “chao phraya” (เจ้าพระยา), a rank of nobility.
Further, there are historical records of a place in the area of what is now Samut Prakan that was called Bang Chao Phraya (บางเจ้าพระยา).
So Wangge Citadel was “Bangkok Citadel” and Wangzhaopi was “Bang Chao Phraya.”
As is hopefully evident, Chen at al. were not really “wrong” in their identifications. They have Wangge Citadel and Wangzhaopi in the right locations.
Nonetheless, there is another level of precision that can be reached if we consider the Thai words that are behind the placenames in Chinese. When we do that, we can see “Bangkok” in Wangge and “Bang Chao Phraya” in Wangzhaopi.