When you are traveling to Kenting, you sooner or later start to notice, that some signs say “Kenting“, while others, especially Google Maps – in many places say Kending? Which one then is correct? In short – the correct way to write it is Kenting. With “T”. However, it may not be so in the future, and why it can be like this – and why some places say Kending – let’s delve into details further. Read On!
Why some sources spell Kenting with "d"?
It is a more “correct” way to spell Kenting as Kending, and if you see for example google maps, you can see in the Kenting road written as Kending road – and that’s because google maps use Hanyu Pinyin system to romanize Chinese characters so that they can be readable for non-Chinese users.
Now, Kenting with “T” – in my humble opinion – not being born in Taiwan, it is because:
1. Kenting with “T” is romanized using the older Wade-Giles romanization system.
2. Kenting pronounced in Taiwanese, sounds more like a “Kun-Ting”, while more mandarin pronunciation would be Kending.
If you are in Taiwan long enough, you will start to notice that in reality second character in Kenting 墾丁 – ding dīng -pinyin is heard more as a d, rather than “t”.
Checking this hypothesis using online converter
First, let’s try romanize Kenting, using this online converter, to Wade-Giles system:
Yes, as we can see, Wade-Giles system comes up with Kenting with “t”. Now, let’s try use Pinyin:
Now, you can see that the Chinese to Pinyin converter comes up as Kending with “d”, so this is why you see google maps and several other sources showing it like that.
However, here is a cool thing – how about translating 墾丁 in google translate to see what comes up then?
How cool is this!?
As you can see, not only google is intelligent enough, to know that it is a place name, so it makes English name as Kenting with T, while as help to pronounce it, it offers you Kending with “d” – which as I mentioned above, is more close to how it sounds in mandarin.
Conclusion
Taiwan in recent years has seen to be slowly adapting Pinyin romanization system for street names, it is very common in some cities see street names written using Hanyu Pinyin and not Wade-Giles.
However, i doubt city and village names will ever be changed to Pinyin, this would mean changing Taipei to Taibei, Taichung to Taizhong and Kaohsiung to GaoXiong – and just remember that person names are still mostly romanized using Wades Giles.
Stick to Kenting for now!