Place names are changed according to the changes of the times, in which the preferences and beautiful visions of the rulers are an important basis for the change of place names, in short, there are not too many laws to speak of in the change of place names, and the longer the history of the place, the more place names have been used (except for Handan). Even after the founding of the country, the names of the places have changed a lot.
However, there is a kind of change of place name, relatively speaking, it is much more stringent, although there are also the preferences of the ruler, but because of such a change in the name of the place, there are many implications, so even the ruler, but also to deal with it carefully, this is the renaming of the capital.
The past and present lives of the East and West Two Capitals
In ancient China, in many cases, it was preferable to use Jing or Du to prove the status of a city's capital, a habit that is generally believed to have originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty.
At that time, the capital of Western Zhou was called Pickaxe, but when King Wu of Zhou destroyed the King of Shang, in order to reflect the status of the capital, it was renamed Hojing. This is also the source of Xijing, and now, it is more called Xi'an.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the capital of the Han Dynasty was moved to Luoyang, but because the Eastern Han Dynasty was inherited from the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Xiu's roots were in Luoyang, so although he claimed to be a descendant of the Jing Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, he did not move the capital to Chang'an for the sake of state management and his own foundations.
But Chang'an still maintained a certain status, nominally equivalent to a capital city, but there is no doubt that in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Luoyang was the capital of no objection.
This also became the foundation for the two-capital system that has been implemented in later generations. There will even be three capitals, or even five capitals, which will lead to the emergence of Tokyo, Xijing, Nanjing, Beijing and other such sayings.
According to the current customary system, the two-capital system, or the accompanying capital system, is that one is a political and cultural center, and the other is an economic and trade center.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, this two-capital system was fully developed, and the Sui and Tang Dynasties, including the wuzhou in the middle, were practicing the two-capital system, which led to the saying that Xijing and Tokyo were so fast,because the two-capital system developed extremely rapidly in the Sui and Tang dynasties, and people also used to call Chang'an Xijing and Luoyang Tokyo (or Dongdu, Shendu).
This is actually due to geographical factors.
Both the East and the West flourished in the Eastern Han Dynasty and flourished in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, so people habitually called Chang'an Xijing and Luoyang Tokyo.
But in the Song Dynasty, although there was also the name of Tokyo, it referred to Bieliang, and there was also the name of Xijing, but it referred to Luoyang.
And in the Liao Kingdom, it is even more interesting, the Liao State has appeared in Tokyo, Xijing, Nanjing, Zhongjing, Shangjing five capitals, and the Liao State ruled the land, far less than the Han and Tang, and even with the Northern Song Dynasty is only half a pound eight two, but there are five capitals, which is also rare in history. For the Liao, Xijing refers to Datong, and Tokyo is Liaoyang.
In the Yuan Dynasty, there was no east and west Jingyi, the capital city was called Dadu, and there was also the birthplace of the Yuan Dynasty, known as Shangdu. There is no official record of the Yuan Dynasty in the East and West.
It can be said that since the Yuan Dynasty, the idea of the two capitals of the east and the west has declined, and it has been replaced by the two capitals of the north and the south.
The past and present lives of the two capitals of the north and south
The emergence of the north and south of the two capitals stems from the southward migration of economic and cultural centers, and the population of the south surpassed that of the north during the Southern Song Dynasty, and such transcendence is a comprehensive transcendence, not only the population, but also the political, economic, cultural and other aspects (except military).
Southerners began to seek a higher status, and the simplest and most intuitive way to do so was to build a capital.
In fact, in the south to build the capital, Eastern Wu, Eastern Jin, Southern Song, all once built the capital Nanjing, which also confirms the cultural heritage of Nanjing.
But these capitals are still a little bit worse, that is, no great unified dynasty built the capital Nanjing. This is indeed almost a fire for Chinese who regard unification as the first major event.
When Nanjing's status was elevated to a veritable capital, it was in the Ming Dynasty, then called Yingtianfu, where Zhu Yuanzhang built the capital, and lasted for more than thirty years, even in the yongle emperor period, he still made Nanjing the capital, until the sixteenth year of Yongle, did not move the capital to Beijing.
Since then, in the Ming Dynasty, there have been three capitals, Nanjing, and Beijing has another called Zhongjing. Zhongjing has a very low sense of existence throughout the history of the Ming Dynasty, located in the current Fengyang County, and the emergence of Zhongjing is only because Zhu Yuanzhang is a Fengyang person, so he also sealed Fengyang as the capital.
The history of Beijing, now it seems, began from the Yuan Capital, has lasted for more than six hundred years, and the historical context of Beijing, relatively speaking, is relatively clear, although many names have been changed, but at least from the Yuan Dynasty to the present, (the early Ming Dynasty and the Republic of China is not the capital city), Beijing's position has been very stable.
Some people have also noticed another phenomenon, in addition to China's east, west, south and north capitals, the capital of Japan is also Tokyo (from a legal point of view, Japan has no capital, Tokyo is at best the administrative center of Japan, out of expression habits, temporarily called the capital).
In fact, this really has nothing to do with China, just like Chinese has changed countless place names in history, the Japanese place names have also changed countless times, and Tokyo, originally called Edo, this name has been in the Japanese shogunate era, the history is much older than the name Of Tokyo, until the Meiji Restoration, it was renamed Tokyo. In the end, it is only the Japanese state's own affairs, and it has nothing to do with China.