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Home > Resources > Glossary of Place Names

Glossary of Place Names in Taiwanese

This page is designed to serve as a guide to the various places in Taiwan and overseas which might be commonly heard in Taiwanese conversation. The first column is the Taiwanese in romanized form, while the second contains the Mandarin characters for the place name.

The situation regarding romanization of Mandarin in Taiwan is quite confused and there are various positions as to which is the preferred orthography. For my part when writing in English I recommend using Hanyu Pinyin (third column) without the tone markings. Other ways the place names are sometimes spelled in 'English' can be seen in the fourth column.

Taiwan

The word for Taiwan itself is Tâi-ôan, which is written as 台灣 in Chinese characters.

Independent cities

Counties and county-level cities

Key

All cities in Taiwan are listed, along with some of the more significant townships. The first place listed after the county name is the 'county seat' - in eight cases this is the same as the county name.

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