25O SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 50 



toward the close of the fifteenth century, became known in China 

 also in the transcription Ou-lo-pa. In the Portuguese-Chinese vocab- 

 ulary appended to the "Ao men chi lio," the Chinese chronicle of 

 Macao, we find that the Portuguese name for Ta hsi yang (Portu- 

 gal) is Lien-nu, by which is evidently understood Lusitania; while 

 the Portuguese name for Spain is written JVo-ya, reading in the 

 Amoy dialect Nga-nia (that is, in Portuguese apparently Hes- 

 panha). These designations, however, were those of geographical 

 and diplomatic language ; the popular term by which the Portuguese 

 and Spanish were both spoken of, and even confounded with each 

 other in literature, was Fo-lang-ghi; i. e., "the Franks." 



The main island of the Philippine group, Luzon, was known to 

 the Chinese, long before the Spanish Conquest, under its native 

 name Luzong, which appears in the texts in the form Lii-sung. 

 This name was also extended to the entire group of islands, and, 

 furthermore, was applied as a tribal name to the native population. 

 At the time when the Spaniards took possession of the Philippines 

 the name Lii-sung designated principally the city of Manila, but it 

 was then transferred also to the Spaniards, who are the "Luzon 

 men" of the Chinese annals, or, officially, Ta Lii-sung kuo. At 

 that time a nickname was also invented for the Spaniards in the 

 form Sung-tsai, which may be explained as follows : The character 

 "sung" in Lii-sung is identical with that in the name of the Sung 

 dynasty of China, which, like all dynasties, has the adjective ta 

 ("great") prefixed to its title. In contrast to the great Sung dy- 

 nasty, the foreign Lii-sung men were contemptuously called Sung- 

 tsai; i. e., the little Sung. A still more derogatory term under 

 which the Spaniards go in the "Ming shih," in passages of a kind 

 to provoke the criticism of the author, is Man (i. e., savages), orig- 

 inally a name restricted to the primitive aboriginal tribes of southern 

 China. 



In modern times the Portuguese retained their old historical 

 name, Ta hsi yang kuo, in diplomatic intercourse with the Chinese 

 court, while the Spaniards adopted the transliteration Ta Jih-ssu-pa- 

 (or pan)-ni-yakuo, which has come up since the early days of the 

 Jesuits ; also Lii-sung is still the Chinese name for Manila, Luzon, 

 and the Philippines generally, and Lii-sung yen ("Luzon smoke") 

 is a common term for Manila cigars. In connection with this 

 terminology it might not be without interest to add that the name 

 "America" occurs for the first time in Chinese literature (about a 

 century after its discovery) in the "Ming shih" (chap. 326) as 

 "A-mo-le-kia" in connection with a report on the famous Jesuit 



