The Innumerable Names
4 min readChina has vast territory and rich natural resources，and the Chinese culture enjoys a long history.In China，the same thing is often called by many different names，andthe Yangtze River is no exception to it.
Initially，the Yangtze River was known as“Jiang”（literally means“river”），which was then an exclusive word for the Yangtze River，just like the word“He”（which also means“river”literally）was used for the Yel-low River exclusively.The word“Jiang”was first ap-peared in an ancient poetry anthology，The Book of Songs of the pre-Qin period（before 221 BC），which is the earli-est collection of poems in China.
In the poem Memories of the Past at Red Cliff-To the Tune of Niannujiao（Charm of a Maiden Singer）writ-ten by the great poet Su Shi in the Northern Song dynasty（960-1127），there already appeared the word“Da Jiang”（the great river）”The Great River eastward flows，withits waves are gone all those gallant heroes of bygone years”. It seemed that people by then had further acknowl-edged the magnificent and spectacular aspect of the Yangtze River, so an adjective was added before”Jiang”.
In fact, in the literatures after Han, Wei and Six Dy-nasties (206BC-600AD), the word “Chang Jiang” (Changjiang River) began to be used already.
In Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279), poetry was very prosperous, and in the poems the word”Chang Jiang”appeared frequently. Wang Bo sighed in his poem In the Mountains:”The Changjiang River has sorrowfully become stagnant, For ten thousand li,I think about return-ing.”; Li Bai also wrote sentences of “Your sail,a single shadow, becomes one with the blue sky, Till now I see on-ly the Changjiang River, on its way to heaven.”in his po-em; Du Fu’s seven-syllable poem A Long Climb also had sentences of “Leaves are dropping down like the spray of a waterfall, While I watch the Changjiang River always rolling on.”These lines all reflected the wide use of the name”Chang Jiang”.
The upper reaches of the Yangtze River
Today we have high-tech satellite detection technolo-gy and helicopters that can fly above the Yangtze River to have a bird’s eye view.But in ancient times，technology was very backward，information-transmission was unde-veloped，and transportation was inconvenient；in addition，the Yangtze River was too long for the ancient people who could only move by walking or riding horses.Therefore，people who lived alongside the different sections of the Yangtze River gave different names to those sections，based on the names of the countries，the states，and the counties at that time.Consequently，the Yangtze River is known by different names over different parts of its course.
The headstream of the Yangtze River，called Tuotuo River，lies in the southwestern side of Geladandong Moun-tain，the main peak of the Tanggula Mountains on the Ti-betan Plateau，with an elevation of 4，700 meters.The next section through to Yushu County in Qinghai province is called Tongtian River（“Lead-to-Heaven River”），whose riverbed has an elevation of three to four kilometers.Peo-ple gave this name to it because they thought the river could reach the sky.After the Yangtze River arrived at the border of Sichuan province and Tibet，it is named Jinsha River（”Golden Sand River”），because it abounds with golden sand.Minjiang River joins the Yangtze River near Yibin in Sichuan province.The section from Yibin to Yichang in Hubei province is called Chuanjiang River，among which the part above Chongqing is curved like aChinese character“几”（ji）and gains the name of Jijiang River.The Yangtze River in the section of Three Gorges is named Xiajiang River(“Gorge River”).
The middle reaches of the Yangtze River are from Yichang in Hubei province to Hukou in Jiangxi province.
The section between Hubei and Hunan provinces flows through the ancient Jing State region, therefore it is also called Jingjiang River. The Yangtze River is divided into nine watercourses at today’s Jiujiang city(which means Nine-river City) in Jiangxi Province, so it is called Jiujiang River. It is also called Xunyang River her, because Jiujiang City was called Xunyang County in the Tang dynasty(618-907).
From Hukou in Jiangxi province to Jiangyin of Jiang-su province are the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The section of the Yangtze River in Anhui province(be-longed to Chu State in ancient time) was once called Chu-jiang River. And the stretch that flows through the Yangtze River Delta is called the Yangtze River, which is still widely used to refer to the whole Yangtze River.
