The book provides highlights on the key concepts and trends of evolution in History of Place Names in China, as one of the series of books of “China Classified Histories”.

Since 1819, more than 6,200 place (street and village) names divided into more than 3,900 name groups were known in Singapore. Based on digitised historical newspapers, dated back to 1830, municipal records and Malay dictionaries, the origins, meanings and date of naming for many place names are uncovered. As part of Singapore history, place names known since 1936 are recorded in this book.Although place names are fairly static in nature, there have been more than 100 name changes. The naming trends transitioned from English to Malay and then back to English names. Discover that Toa Payoh was not named after a big swamp, Anderson Road was named before John Anderson, a former Governor, took up his job and many more new findings in this exciting book.This book is a complete listing of all place names since 1936, together with the most comprehensive annotations to date — a first in Singapore. It is also the only book of its kind that analyses naming trends. Information on the origins or date of naming was based on primary sources such as old maps, minutes of municipal meetings, Chinese books and digitised newspapers.

A placename is often much more than just a label. A name may bespeak the history of a nation, the culture of a people, or the hopes of an individual. Such connections are revealed in this very large reference work on placenames of the world, which offers an in-depth look at the origins of each. First published in 1997, this 2006 edition contains 6,000+ entries--natural features such as mountains, rivers and lakes and human entities such as cities and countries. Each entry includes the name of the feature; a brief description and its geographical location; and the origin of the name with relevant historical, biographical and topographical details. Appendices give the meanings of common elements of non-English placenames (e.g., Abu, as in Abu Dhabi, means "father of"); major placenames in European languages (e.g., Pays-Bas and Paesi Bassi are the French and Italian names, respectively, for what English speakers call the Netherlands); and transcribed Chinese-language equivalents for the names of the world's countries and capitals.

Endymion Wilkinson's bestselling manual of Chinese history has long been an indispensable guide to all those interested in the civilization and history of China. In this latest edition, now in a bigger format, its scope has been dramatically enlarged by the addition of one million words of new text. Twelve years in the making, the new manual introduces students to different types of transmitted, excavated, and artifactual sources from prehistory to the twentieth century. It also examines the context in which the sources were produced, preserved, and received, the problems of research and interpretation associated with them, and the best, most up-to-date secondary works. Because the writing of history has always played a central role in Chinese politics and culture, special attention is devoted to the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese historiography.

The crucial period of Chinese history, 220-960, falls naturally into contrasting phases. The first phase, also known as that of "early medieval China," is an age of political decentralization. Following the breakup of the Han empire, China was plunged into civil war and fragmentation and stayed divided for nearly four centuries. The second phase started in 589, during the Sui dynasty, when China was once again brought under a single government. Under the Sui, the bureaucracy was revitalized, the military strengthened, and the taxation system reformed. The fall of the Sui in 618 gave way to the even stronger Tang dynasty, which represents an apogee of traditional Chinese civilization. Inheriting all the great institutions developed under the Sui, the Tang made great achievements in poetry, painting, music, and architecture. The An Lushan rebellion, which also took place during Tang rule, brought about far-reaching changes in the socioeconomic, political, and military arenas. What transpired in the second half of the Tang and the ensuing Five Dynasties provided the foundation for the next age of late imperial China. The Historical Dictionary of Medieval China fills an urgent need for a standard reference tailored to the interest of Western academics and readers. The history of medieval China is related through the book's introductory essay, maps, a table of Dynastic Periods, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on key people, historical geography, arts, institutions, events, and other important terms.

This book describes how powerful computing technology, emerging big and open data sources, and theoretical perspectives on spatial synthesis have revolutionized the way in which we investigate social sciences and humanities. It summarizes the principles and applications of human-centered computing and spatial social science and humanities research, thereby providing fundamental information that will help shape future research. The book illustrates how big spatiotemporal socioeconomic data facilitate the modelling of individuals’ economic behavior in space and time and how the outcomes of such models can reveal information about economic trends across spatial scales. It describes how spatial social science and humanities research has shifted from a data-scarce to a data-rich environment. The chapters also describe how a powerful analytical framework for identifying space-time research gaps and frontiers is fundamental to comparative study of spatiotemporal phenomena, and how research topics have evolved from structure and function to dynamic and predictive. As such this book provides an interesting read for researchers, students and all those interested in computational and spatial social sciences and humanities.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2012, held in Taipei, China, in November 2012. The 27 revised full papers, 17 revised short papers, and 13 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 93 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on cultural heritage preservation, retrieval and browsing in digital libraries, biliometrics, metadata and cataloguing, mobile and cloud computing, human factors in digital library, presevation systems and algorithms, social media, digital library algorithms and systems, recommendation applications and social networks.

This is the first volume of a two-volume set on the names of China, focusing on the country's official titles throughout history. Using interdisciplinary approaches from fields such as history, geography, ethnic studies, linguistics, psychology and toponymy, this two-volume set examines the origin and evolution of China's names over more than 4,000 years of history. The first volume examines the official names of the country given by the rulers or government, including the names of the imperial dynasties, from the earliest Xia to the last Qing, and the title of the Republic of China, which symbolises a new era in national naming. The author examines the common features as well as the cultural contexts and historical traditions that underlie these diverse titles. The origins and meanings of national titles, their secondary connotations, evolving understandings and related implications are explored. The book also analyses the lifespan and spatial references of these national titles. This book will appeal to both academic and general readers interested in Chinese history, Chinese historical geography and Chinese toponymy.