In 1544 (the 23rd year of the Jiajing era during the Ming Dynasty), the Portuguese happened to pass by the island of Taiwan while trading between Japan and Macau. Although they never landed, they praised the island from afar across the sea as Ilha Formosa (Beautiful Island). This has led many in Taiwan to take pride in residing on the “Formosa” found on world maps.
(Note: Modern scholars have confirmed that the “Formosa” referred to by the Portuguese at that time actually pointed to the Okinawa Islands. On nautical charts of that era, Taiwan Island was already marked as ‘Lequeo Pequeno’ or Little Ryukyu, so there was no mistaking the two.)
Historically, before the Han Chinese began large-scale migration to Taiwan, the residents of the plains had no written language and no concepts of “nation” or “race.” They were later collectively referred to as the “Pingpu tribes.” If categorized by region, various ethnic groups existed: the Pingpu of Yilan were the “Kavalan,” those in the Taipei area were the “Ketagalan,” those in the Taichung area were the “Papora/Pazeh,” and those in the Tainan area were the “Siraya.” The residents of the Anping area in Tainan belonged to a branch of the Siraya. Today, these groups are collectively known as Indigenous Peoples.
Read More: “A Brief History of Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples and Negritos in East Asia”
During the Wanli era of the Ming Dynasty, when Fujianese fishermen first arrived in the Anping area and inquired about the name of the place, the indigenous people responded with “Taywan.” Based on the pronunciation in the Hokkien (Min Nan) dialect, Han Chinese translated this as “Dayuan” (大員), “Taiyuan” (台員), or “Taiwan” (台灣). The sandbar of Anping was then referred to as “Taiwan Islet.” (These names should all be understood through their Hokkien pronunciation.)
After the Wanli era, Han Chinese generally referred to the area as “Dayuan.” Calling it “Taiwan” became the standard only after the Qing Dynasty. Although “Dayuan” and “Taiwan” share the same sound, the characters for “Taiwan” were considered more elegant and were thus adopted. Over the past four hundred years, the scope of the name “Taiwan” has evolved alongside different eras.
Before the Dutch colonial period (when the Dutch East India Company marked out land to build its headquarters), “Taiwan” referred only to the area around present-day Anping. Later, during the Dutch and Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) periods, as immigrants from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou increased, the term “Taiwan” became a proxy name for the “Tainan region.”
In 1684, the Qing court incorporated Taiwan into the map of China. The Kangxi Emperor officially named it “Taiwan Prefecture” (臺灣府), under the jurisdiction of Fujian Province. The term “Taiwan” officially became the name for the entire island.
Later, following the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan used the negotiations of the Treaty of Shimonoseki to invade Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, forcing the Qing court to cede them. During the ensuing Japanese colonial period, the name “Formosa” was the designation used by the Japanese government internationally, though the Romanized “Taiwan” also began to appear globally.
Consequently, after the restoration of Taiwan to the Republic of China (R.O.C.) in 1945, the use of “Taiwan” as the standard Romanization became increasingly universal on the international stage.