Chang Jiang
/ˌtʃɑːŋ ˈdʒjɑːŋ/noun
The Chinese name for the Yangtze River, the longest river in China and the third-longest in the world.
Did you know?“Yangtze” is not the river’s traditional Chinese name for its entire length; Chang Jiang is, while Yangtze originally referred to a lower section near Yangzhou.
Etymological Timeline
Old Chinese, c. 1st millennium BCE
Old Chinese
長江
“Long River”
Middle Chinese, c. 6th–10th centuries
Middle Chinese
長江
“The long river; the characters retained the same basic meaning”
Modern Mandarin
Mandarin Chinese
Cháng Jiāng
“Long River; the standard Chinese name for the Yangtze”
19th–20th Century
English
Chang Kiang / Chang Jiang
“English transliterations of the Mandarin name”
Modern English
English
Chang Jiang
“The Chinese name commonly used in English-language geographic and scholarly contexts”