The name game

Tamsui has a place in the history of Chinese Romanization. The inventor of the Wade-Giles system was a British diplomat and sinologist named Herbert Giles. He developed his system of translating Chinese to English while acting as British consul at Tamsui between 1885 and 1891. His research offices were located in Hong Mao Fort—home to Spanish conquistadors, Dutch merchants and British scholars in turn.

If you log onto the Internet or go to the library looking for information on our sister city, one of the first things you will notice is that its name is spelled several different ways: Tamsui, Tamshuei, Dànshu, Danshuei.

The reason for these different spellings is different Romanization systems have been used. Different systems will convert the Chinese sounds into different spellings.