What does the name Beijing mean?
Beiping
Beiping or Peiping (), meaning "Northern Peace" in Chinese, is a former name of Beijing, which means "Northern Capital". The city was called Beiping from 1368 to 1403 and from 1928 to 1949, when the Chinese capital was at Nanjing, or "Southern Capital". In 1403 and again in 1949, the city's name was changed from Beiping to Beijing or "Northern Capital." From 1937 to 1945, the city under Japanese occupation served as the capital of a puppet regime and was renamed Beijing but most Chinese histories use the name Beiping for the city during that time period.
Names of Beijing
"Peking" is a spelling created by French missionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries. In "De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas" (1615), Matteo Ricci calls the city "Pechinum". (The English translation gives "Pequin".) "Peking" appears in "A Description of the Empire of China" (1735) by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde. These early spellings may represent pronunciation in the Nanjing dialect, which was used as a lingua franca at this time, or the various other southern Chinese languages (e.g., Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka) used by the traders of the port cities visited by early European traders. Peking was the English name of the city until the adoption of pinyin. However, it is still employed adjectivally in terms such as "Pekingese", "Peking duck", "Peking Man" and various others. The name is retained at Peking University as well. The name remains in common and official use in many other languages.