The Weight of a Name: Reflections on Ethnonym Evolution and the Challenge of Writing the Term "Tai" (Languages) in Chinese, Inspired by the "Dài 岱" versus "Dài Yī 岱依" Debate

The image shows a screenshot from a slide in the lecture The Zhuang People's Antiphonal Singing Tradition "NgyamSley": Linguistic and Cultural Convergence in the Lingnan Region, delivered by the author at The Education University of Hong Kong on November 2, 2025. This image is not directly related to the content of this article.

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LIAO Hanbo, Friday, January 9, 2026 – Chiang Mai, Thailand

Yesterday, a student from HKU inquired about potential Kra-Dai substrate influences in Cantonese, and his materials mentioned the term 岱依语 (Dài-Yī yǔ). This designation is actually a common mistranslation of 岱语 (Dài yǔ), the Tày language, yet it inadvertently reveals a complex picture woven from literal misreading, historical documentation, and political classification. It compels us to explore deeply how ethnonyms transform across linguistic contexts and the systemic challenges faced by the Tai language branch communities in representing themselves using Chinese characters.

I. The Genesis and Propagation of a Mistranslation: From the Compound Term "Tày-Nùng" to the Error of a Single Morpheme "Dài Yī"

Tày is the language of the Tày people (Chinese: 岱族), Vietnam's largest ethnic minority group, primarily concentrated in the northeastern provinces bordering Guangxi, such as the provinces of Lạng Sơn and Cao Bằng. Linguistically, it belongs to the Tai group of the Kam-Tai branch in the Kra-Dai language family. Together with Southern Zhuang in China, it forms the Central Tai subgroup within the Tai group.

The compound term 岱儂 (Tày-Nùng) originates from the long-standing practice in Vietnamese and Chinese documents of referring to the Tày and Nùng peoples together, due to their shared language and similar customs. The Nùng people are Southern Zhuang subgroups that migrated from Guangxi and Yunnan to northern Vietnam over the last two centuries. Despite their mutual intelligibility and cultural proximity, they are classified as two distinct political ethnic groups in Vietnam's official recognition. In contrast, the direct counterpart groups of the Tày people within China (such as the Daez/Day [taj A2] in Longzhou and the Pen/Pheen [pʰeːn A1] in Fangchenggang, Guangxi) are regarded as constituent parts of the Southern Zhuang, collectively forming the Zhuang ethnicity in China alongside the Northern Zhuang. Officially published Vietnamese textbooks, dictionaries, and media, while often bearing the "Tày-Nùng" title, typically use Tày phonology as their representative basis.

How did 岱 (dài) become misinterpreted as 岱依 (dài yī) in some Chinese literature? The key lies in the visual distortion caused by simplified Chinese characters: the simplified form of 儂 (the character used to refer to the Nùng) is written as 侬, which is extremely similar in shape to 依. Compounded by the existence of China's Buyi (布依) people—closely related to Northern Zhuang—whose name already contains the character 依 (yī), this multi-contextual influence led to the widespread misreading of dài-nóng 岱儂 (simplified: 岱侬) as dài-yī 岱依 in some Chinese media and publications. Furthermore, a number of media professionals and scholars, unfamiliar with the actual circumstances, have mistakenly interpreted the joint reference to the two ethnic groups, Tày-Nùng, as the disyllabic name of a single ethnicity. Thus, a historical conjunctive term referring to two groups was reshaped into a disyllabic ethnonym "dàiyī" for the Tày group, placed alongside the “nóng” (Nùng) group, as in 岱依族和儂族 (dài-yī-zú hé nóng-zú) 'the Tày and the Nùng', creating conceptual and classificatory confusion. This type of misreading caused by simplified characters is not an isolated case. Earlier, when Zhuang netizens transliterated "beix nuengx" (siblings) as 貝儂(bèi nóng), its simplified form 贝侬 closely resembled 贝依 (bèi yī). A singer unfamiliar with Zhuang, performing a song containing this term at the Guangxi International Folk Song Festival, repeatedly sang "贝依" (bèi yī) leading to an awkward and much-ridiculed moment—a direct casualty of the simplified form of the character 儂 (> 侬).

II. Tracing the Roots of the Name: The Common Origin of 岱, 泰, 傣, 台and偙

The Tày autonym is transcribed as Daez in Standard Zhuang, Day in Nong Iaang Zhuang, and Tày in Vietnamese. This name shares a common origin with 偙 (my proposed character for the Tai branch), Thailand's 泰 (ไทย Thai), the Dai people's 傣 (ᨴᩱ᩠ᨿ /ᦑᦺ Dai), all deriving from the Proto-Tai form *dajA. This was the common autonym of the ancestors of the Central and Southwestern Tai subgroups and is also related to the ethnonym of the Hlai (黎 Lí) people of Hainan.

The proto-onset *d- of this word is similar to the Middle Chinese 定 (dìng) initial. Its modern development parallels that of Chinese dialects: in some Tai languages, it evolved into a voiceless aspirated alveolar stop onset [tʰ] (e.g., in Thai, Lao, some Tày dialects, and the Zuozhou dialect group of Southern Zhuang); in others, it developed into a voiceless unaspirated alveolar stop onset [t] (e.g., in most Dai dialects, Northern Thai, most Tày dialects, and most Zhuang dialects).

From the perspective of Chinese character logic, a single character could theoretically encompass this linguistic group (despite modern dialectal differences, e.g., Hàn in Mandarin and Hon in Cantonese for 漢). However, because the Tai-speaking communities historically did not develop a unified writing system, their dialects now exhibit this distinction in aspiration, and there is a need to differentiate between various political and cultural entities, it became customary to use different Chinese characters (傣, 泰, 岱) to write this cognate autonym. Since Li Fang-Kuei, Chinese linguistic circles have exclusively used the character 台 to refer to this language branch. Today, I advocate for using 偙 instead. This change is motivated not only because the term 台語 (tái yǔ) is widely understood in popular usage to refer to Taiwanese Southern Min (Hokkien) but, more importantly, because the Zhuang, as an indigenous people who began to be under the influence of the Chinese characters soon after their introduction to the Lingnan region around 2200 years ago, share a vast body of Old to Middle Chinese loanwords with other Tai groups. This demonstrates that these peoples collectively absorbed Chinese loanwords in Lingnan before their divergence. Therefore, the choice of which character to use for writing their core vocabulary must carefully consider the historical phonetic correspondences between Zhuang and Chinese phonology.

III. The Dilemma and Choice in Writing: Phonetic Correspondence, Historical Loanwords, and the Proposal of "偙"

The rime of the character 台 (tái) belongs to the Middle Chinese 咍 (tāi) rhyme category. In the traditional Zhuang character writing system, characters with this rime were often used to record the sounds of the vocabulary with the diphthong [aːi] containing a long [aː] as its nucleus. For example, dai/thaay [taːi/tʰaːi] 'to die' is written with 殆 in the Zhuang character system. The Chinese loanword 臺 (stage), also has the rime belonging to the 咍 (tāi) rhyme, and is pronounced as [taːjA2] with this diphthong -ai [aːj] in Zhuang (Standard Zhuang: daiz; Nong Iaang: daay). However, the rime of the Tai autonym Daez/Day [tɐjA2] (< *dajA) is actually with a short /a/ [ɐ], corresponding precisely to the Middle Chinese 齊 rhyme, making it homophonous with Chinese loanwords daez/day 'title' (題 tí) and daez/day ‘hoof’ (蹄 tí) .

In his paper "Kam-Tai lexicons in the Song Dynasty Lingnan Documents " (Guangxi Ethnic Studies, 2006, Vol. 3, pp. 21-25), Tai Chung-pui cites the Northern Song text Jīlè Biān (雞肋編) by Zhuāng Chuò (莊綽), which records: "南方舉子至都諱蹄子，謂其為爪，與獠同音也" [When southern examination candidates reached the capital, they avoided the term tízi [hoof], calling it zhuǎ [claw], because it was homophonous with liáo [Lao]]. He points out that the character 蹄 here refers to the autonym of the Zhuang ancestors (the Liáo/Lao people), hence the need for taboo.

In his paper "Kam-Tai lexicons in the Song Dynasty Lingnan Documents " (Minority Languages of China, 2006, Vol. 3, pp. 21-25), Tai Chung-pui cites the Northern Song text Jīlè Biān (雞肋編) by Zhuāng Chuò (莊綽 1079-1149 AD), which records: "南方舉子至都諱蹄子，謂其為爪，與獠同音也" [When southern examination candidates reached the capital, they avoided the term tízi [hoof], calling it zhuǎ [claw], because it was homophonous with liáo [Lao]]. He points out that the character 蹄 here refers to the autonym of the Zhuang ancestors (the Liáo/Lao people), hence the need for taboo. Tai further pointed out that the Southern Song scholar Fàn Chéngdà (范成大 1126-1193 AD) also recorded in the “Tribal Territories under Loose Rein” (羈縻州峒) section of his Guìhǎi Yúhéng Zhì · Zhì Mán (桂海虞衡志·志蠻): “There are appointed prefects, acting prefects, overseers, county magistrates, and tribal chiefs, followed by assistant deputies and acting deputies—all these are called zhǔhù 主戶 ‘master households.’ The remaining common people are referred to as títuó 提陀, meaning ‘ordinary subjects.’” In this context, the character 提 in the term “提陀” (títuó) shares the same pronunciation, both historically and in modern times, with the aforementioned character 蹄. This can be interpreted as a Chinese-character transcription of the ancient Zhuang autonym *dajA, providing additional evidence that the ancestors of the Zhuang people in Guangxi indeed used this term as their autonym.

I argue that this precisely illustrates how later Zhuang people, due to deep Sinicization and borrowing the loanword “daez/day” [tɐjA2] (蹄) to mean animal hooves—which was homophonous with their ancient autonym — gradually downplayed or even forgot their original autonym Daez/Day [tɐjA2]. They adopted a new autonym borrowed from Middle Chinese, 土 (Thó, meaning ‘local people’), while the ancient name Daez/Day [tɐjA2] survived only in their memory for referring to the Tày people across the Sino-Vietnamese border.

Given that it is inappropriate to use the character 蹄 (with the 'foot' radical ⻊) to refer to an ethnic group or language, I propose using the person-radical character 偙. One could also use 偍, with the person-semantic radical 亻and the phonetic radical 是, homophonous with 題 ‘title’ (Chinese: tí; Zhuang daez [tɐjA2]), but the modern Mandarin pronunciation shì of the common character 是 ‘to be’ is too dominant in perception. Therefore, 偙 is more suitable. Its Mandarin pronunciation is recommended to remain tái [tʰai³⁵] (identical to 台), aligning with the pronunciation of major modern Tai dialects. Its Cantonese pronunciation, however, should be homophonous with 蹄 and 題, pronounced as tai4 [tʰɐi²¹], as this reading perfectly matches the ancient phonological system of the Tai autonym. This means for Mandarin speakers, it is a change of character while preserving the sound; for Cantonese speakers, it is a change in both character and pronunciation, adjusted according to their respective linguistic contexts.

Conclusion

Starting from the minor yet persistent mistranslation of 岱依 (dài yī), we gain a glimpse into the profound history carried by ethnonyms: they are entangled with the scholarly tracing of linguistic pedigrees, the conventions of historical documentation, the evolution of written forms over time, the political boundaries of national ethnicities, and the flow of cultural memory across borders. Seeking a writing solution within the Chinese character tradition for a deep and vast linguistic-cultural group like the "Tai branch" — one that is phonetically precise, historically coherent, and avoids contemporary misunderstanding — is in itself a profound endeavour connecting academic research with ethnic identity. Each examination and analysis of a name is an attempt to decipher the eternal code inscribed in the stratigraphic layers of language, concerning human migration, cultural interaction, and self-definition.

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