Keelung ("chicken coop")

When I first learned the name of this important port city in northeastern Taiwan, I was told that it was originally written with characters that mean "chicken coop; hen coop; rooster cage", Taiwanese "Kelang" (POJ Ke-lâng/Koe-lâng).  I found that to be rather droll and thought that it was probably derived from the cramped geological formation of the hilly city.  The actual story of the city's name, which has come back into the news today, is quite different, as I will explain below the break.

Keelung pranked by name change on Google Maps Prankster used characters for 18th century rendering of Keelung's name Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News (Oct. 24, 2025)

DeAeth gives a rundown of what happened:

Keelung was pranked this week when an anonymous internet user changed the Mandarin characters for the city’s name on Google Maps.

The prankster changed the city’s name to the way it was written historically, using the characters “jilong” (鷄籠) or “chicken coop,” rather than the modern characters for Keelung (基隆). Keelung City Government, which became aware of the issue on Oct. 22, sent a letter to Google requesting a correction, reported LTN.

There have been several reports of schools and landmarks around Taiwan having their names altered on Google Maps by pranksters in recent months. This marks the first time a municipal district or government organization was targeted.

Here's a more detailed account of the history of the city's name:

While it has been proposed that this name was derived from the local mountain that took the shape of a rooster cage, it is more likely that the name was derived from the first inhabitants of the region, as are the names of many other Taiwanese cities.* In this case, the Ketagalan people were the first inhabitants, and early Han settlers probably approximated "Ketagalan" with Ke-lâng (Ketagalan: ke- -an, "domain marker circumfix" + Taiwanese Hokkien 儂／人; lâng; 'person'), with the noun root and the suffix part of the circumfix replaced together with the common Taiwanese Hokkien term for people, shortening the circumfix to just its prefix part. 

[VHM:  Before the Han settlers adopted this disyllabic Sinitic approximation of "Ketagalan", the Dutch had already appropriated a fuller transcription of the name.]

In 1875, during the late Qing era, a new official name was given (Chinese: 基隆; pinyin: Jīlóng; lit. 'base prosperous'). In Mandarin, probably the working language of Chinese government at the time, both the old and new names were likely pronounced Gīlóng (hence "Keelung").

Under Japanese rule (1895–1945), the city was also known to the west by the Japanese romanization Kiirun.

In Taiwanese Hokkien, the native language of the area, the city is called Ke-lâng. In Hanyu Pinyin, the most common romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, the name of Keelung is written as Jīlóng (the shift from g [k] to j [t͡ɕ] is a recent development in the Beijing dialect; see Old Mandarin).  [VHM:  the palatalization of the velars]

(Wikipedia)

[*Including the name of Taiwan itself, as I have often pointed out on Language Log and elsewhere, which does not mean "Terrace Bay" (Táiwān 臺灣) as the characters seem to indicate, but derive from the ethnonym of an indigenous / aboriginal people) — do a Google search for:  victor mair language log taiwan terrace bay — see especially n. 61 here]

As AntC said when he sent me this news, "Might we take a wild guess at where these 'anonymous' pranksters are based?"  

 

Selected readings

• "Japanese readings of Sinographic names" (9/26/18)
• Mair, Victor (2004), "Laurent Sagart. The Roots of Old Chinese" (PDF), Sino-Platonic Papers, 145 (August, 2004) 17–20.

[Thanks to AntC]