Talk:Great Qing Copper Coin

Name

This coinage was officially known in the English language during the late Qing period as the "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin". Now it is commonly referred to in English as the "Great Qing Copper Coin" (akin to Great Qing Legal Code), "Qing Copper Coin", "Qing Dynasty Copper Coin", "Qing dynasty copper coins", among similar names. According to WP:TITLE, the article title should be recognizable in English, in addition to being natural, precise, concise, and consistent. --Wengier (talk) 00:08, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Wengier, I didn't see your comment here, in this instance "Da-Qing Tongbi" is the inscription on this coin, the Manchu Qing Dynasty issued a number of other copper coins during this period (Tongyuan) which had different inscriptions, the title in this case should be the inscription and not the English translation. I've seen many English-language numismatic sources about these coins and they usually use the Mandarin name and then put the English translation in parentheses when introduced. This is actually the norm in the numismatic sphere. Note that the inscription is actually written on the coin, like how the words "Da-Qing Baochao" is also written on the note. The translation in this case is a neologism purely created for Wikipedia and isn't something that external sources agree on. -- — Donald Trung (talk) 07:58, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Per "Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)", "Where there is an English word or an exonym for the subject but a native version is more common in English-language usage, the English name should be mentioned but should not be used as the article title.". -- — Donald Trung (talk) 07:59, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

AFAICS, the English transliteration "Da-Qing Tongbi" (from the Traditional Chinese "大清銅幣") is only one of the English names often mentioned in English-language sources, but English names like "Great Qing Copper Coin", "Qing Copper Coin", "Qing Dynasty Copper Coin" (along with "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin", the official English name) are commonly used in English sources and websites as well, even though there is no universal modern English standard name for the coinage (but the majority of such names include the words "Copper Coin" as a proper name). --Wengier (talk) 17:20, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. It is true that there were inscriptions on this coin (as you just said), but as we can see from the coinage itself the inscriptions were actually bilingual (or even trilingual if the Manchu text meaning "minted during the Guangxu [or Xuantong] years" is counted), that is, "大清銅幣" in Traditional Chinese on the obverse side and "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" in English on the reverse side of the coinage. This means "大清銅幣" (meaning "Great Qing Copper Coin") was the official Chinese name for the coinage whereas "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" (i.e. "Great Qing Empire Copper Coin" with Wade–Giles romanization) was the official English name for the coinage. Indeed there is no English inscription "Da-Qing Tongbi" on this coin, but only "大清銅幣" in Traditional Chinese and "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" in English. The name "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" was not at all an English translation, but rather the actual English inscription on the coinage (along with Traditional Chinese inscription "大清銅幣"). Whether the Qing had issued other copper coins (mainly provincial coinages as stated in the article), this copper coin (i.e. the topic of this article) was officially known as "大清銅幣" in Traditional Chinese and "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" in English to show the intent for this copper coin to be the standard coinage of the Qing empire. Apart from names like "Great Qing Copper Coin", "Qing Copper Coin", "Qing Dynasty Copper Coin", "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin", some English sources do also mention the name "Da-Qing Tongbi", yet this does not appear from the inscription on the coin, but rather a modern transliteration using pinyin from the official Chinese name "大清銅幣" in these sources (along with other variants like "Da Qing Tong Bi", "Daqing Tongbi", etc also transliterated with pinyin). According to different English sources, I think such transliteration can be seen as alternative English name(s) for the coinage (among other names), as it is only one of the commonly used names for the coinage in English sources, whereas other English sources use different names like those already mentioned above. There is no universal standard name for the coinage as used in modern-day English sources, but some English names (especially those containing the words "Copper Coin" as a proper name) do appear to be more recognizable than the others. --Wengier (talk) 17:13, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Wengier, You're correct that the name "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" appears on these coins but then "Great Qing Copper Coin" would make less sense than "Great Qing Empire Copper Coin", but this English translation is exclusive for this series, it does not appear on the silver (Da-Qing Yinbi) and gold (Da-Qing Jinbi) coins, as the copper-alloy coins in this series is either usually referred to by its denomination and is the only one with an English translation on the coin itself. To this end, I don't really see why the "Empire" part of the inscription has to be omitted, the term "Great Qing Copper Coin" is neither the English inscription nor the Mandarin-Chinese inscription, but an odd hybrid of both.
Regarding the banknotes, while Numista does use "Da-Ming Baochao" here and here, Google Arts & Culture uses "Chinese Ming banknote" so there doesn't seem to be an established English name for the Ming period paper money. But with the Qing dynasty, the British Museum uses "Great Qing Treasure Note" here. So, I'm not completely opposed to the use of the term "Great Ming / Qing Treasure Note", it's just that no English-language source seems to agree on this term and the usage of the Mandarin-Chinese reading of the inscription seems less like us (Wikipedia) picking a reading, but as it's the literal translation and alternatives like "Great Qing copper notes" being further removed from the source inscription I would agree that this is a better title if English should be used for the title.
The lack of a universal standard English name means that the universal standard Mandarin name (大清銅幣) is the most recognisable name, it is in fact the only name that these coins have in common. Also, while the name "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" appears on some of these coins, this English name doesn't appear on all of them, for example here and here. My main issue is that Wikipedia shouldn't single out one English translation over another one if there doesn't appear to be any consensus among the sources outside of Wikipedia then we shouldn't try to single out a name based on some rather arbitrary standards, why use the modern Pinyin for an item that uses Wade-Giles? We don't use gongfu instead of kung-fu either.
I'm not against these articles having English titles (as that would be better for novice readers that aren't familiar with these subjects), I am just not sure if we should pick the current name over anything else. -- — Donald Trung (talk) 08:17, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

The term "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo" (as in "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo Copper Coin" mentioned above) was a Wade-Giles romanization of the Chinese term "大清帝國" as used during the Qing period, but this political entity (i.e. 大清帝國) is now more commonly referred to in the English language as "Qing Dynasty" and "Great Qing" (than "Tai-Ching-Ti-Kuo", "Great Qing Empire", etc), and this is also why in modern English sources and websites the coinage is often referred to as "Qing Dynasty Copper Coin" (see here) or "Great Qing Copper Coin" (see here), apart from transliterated names from other language(s). While there is a standard Mandarin name (大清銅幣) for the coinage, there are also different ways such a name is transliterated into English, such as "Da-Qing Tongbi" (see here), "Da Qing Tong Bi" (see here), "Daqing Tongbi (see here), etc. Clearly there is no universal standard transliteration from the Chinese name either, even when they are all transliterated using pinyin (with the name "Da-Qing Tongbi" being only one of such transliterations). In any case, there is no standard English transliteration (from Chinese) anyway, and as you also mentioned above English titles are better for novice readers that are not familiar with these subjects than transliterations.

While it is probably true that an English inscription only appeared in the Copper Coin, the English name can be easily extended to the Silver Coin and the Gold Coin, which are for example referred to as such in the book "A Monetary History of China - Volume 2" (Page 686), which states "These were the Great Qing Gold Coin, Great Qing Silver Coin and Great Qing Copper Coin", and the book "中國歷代金銀貨幣通覽: 近代金銀貨幣章卷" (Page 24), which also states "By that time currency reform had been brewing in the Qing Imperial Court, and some thoughts were given to the establishment of the gold standard currency system in China by minting a set of the Great Qing Gold Coin, Great Qing Silver Coin and Great Qing Copper Coin in a bid to unify the currency". Thus, names like "Great Qing Gold Coin" and "Great Qing Silver Coin" are indeed referred to as such in English sources in addition to "Great Qing Copper Coin". According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), if there is a common English form of the name [not necessarily a universal standard name], this is preferred over a systematically transliterated name. But all such names can be mentioned in the article(s) as alternative names as well. --Wengier (talk) 18:44, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Wengier, having looked at those sources I'm convinced by your arguments. — Donald Trung (talk) 08:57, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

How much is this coin worth? I have found one and am not sure about it because there are no estimations on it, not even on eBay! 90.202.134.33 (talk) 14:11, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Manchu text

The Manchu text on the coinage (near the top of the rim of the coin on the obverse side) read ᠪᠠᡩᠠᠷᠠᠩᡤᠠ
ᡩᠣᠷᠣ ᡳ
ᠠᠨᡳᠶᠠᡳ
ᠸᡝᡳᠯᡝᡥᡝ (and later ᡤᡝᡥᡠᠩᡤᡝ
ᠶᠣᠰᠣ ᡳ
ᠠᠨᡳᠶᠠᡳ
ᠸᡝᡳᠯᡝᡥᡝ), meaning "minted during the Guangxu (or Xuantong) years", to indicate the era of mintage, either Guangxu Emperor (whose era name was ᠪᠠᡩᠠᠷᠠᠩᡤᠠ
ᡩᠣᠷᠣ in Manchu) or Xuantong Emperor (whose era name was ᡤᡝᡥᡠᠩᡤᡝ
ᠶᠣᠰᠣ in Manchu), same as the meaning of the Chinese text "光緒年造" (and later "宣統年造") near the top of the rim of the coin on the reverse side. The Manchu text does not mean "Great Qing Copper Coin" as falsely claimed by certain sources; it refers to the era during which the coinage was made rather than the name of the coinage. An image of the coinage made during the Xuantong era can be found from here. --Wengier (talk) 02:02, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Wengier, Feel free to improve it. — Donald Trung (talk) 06:57, 5 September 2023 (UTC)