HONG KONG PLACE NAMES
139
or husbandry, tools and household articles, and above all in place-names. Now we have no evidence of the languages spoken by the boat-people before they learnt Chinese; we know something of the Yao179 language; and nothing at all is known of the Shan-lao165. But some glossaries of the languages of the south were compiled in the T'ang174, Sung168 and Yüan12 dynasties and there is a fairly good list131 in the Man-shu150, which however lumps them all together as 'Man'1147 without saying which of the many kinds of Man. The chance of our being able to establish beyond doubt any identification of the local hill-tribes or their language is therefore slender.
The list which follows contains 125 words found in local place-names, or in the daily speech of the people, which are not found in Chinese dictionaries or are found only with other meanings. It is in these words that clues must be found, if they are to be found. It will be seen that the Man glossaries do help in a few cases—the slender chance comes off!
At the end of the list I have included, with some trepidation, a note on words which may enshrine the names by which some of the aborigines called themselves. When speaking to the Rotary Club I presented this as pure speculation. Since then, however, I have read Mr. Ch'en Hsü-ching's135 book Tan-min-ti yen-chiu1, which confirms some of my surmises concerning the boat-people, some of whom were indeed known as Ma-jen146. There is, however, a great deal of spade-work to be done before these surmises can be called a theory, and whether anybody can be found with both the qualifications and the time to undertake such work before the spread of education erases the oral traditions is a question I cannot answer with any confidence.
LIST OF PECULIAR WORDS
The words contained in this list comprise (i) those current in the local farmers' and fishermen's speech but not standard Cantonese or Hakka13, (ii) those which occur in local place-names and cannot be explained by their ordinary meanings in Cantonese or Hakka, (iii) those which, though explainable after a fashion, present variations in pronunciation which makes it unlikely that they are really the words in Cantonese or Hakka137 which they pretend to be, (iv) other words of special interest or perplexity in local place names. The names are shown in the official spelling (O.S.) and in the