At their first meeting, the topic for poems was "Dongshan" --or "the eastern mountains." Because the mountains of eastern Taiwan bore few human footprints, and no one had written verse in praise of them, they named the society Dongyin, meaning "intoning the eastern mountains."
他們首次聚會以「東山」為詩題，因為當時台灣東部的崇山峻嶺人跡罕至，以前也沒有人歌詠，詩社就稱為「東吟」。