Talk:Hongkew

Early Use

Per suggestion at [1] that 'Hongkew' may originate as "the Postal romanization of 虹口" I want to try to confirm the age of this word and whether this word predates the beginning of the postal romanization system which began perhaps in at earliest(?) 1878 (from the Wikipedia page) (will add as discovered):

• 1850 (hyphenated)
• 1853 (?)
• 1860
• --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:21, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Do you know how reliable the dates given by Google Books is? The first source says 1873 on the previous page, and the book title says 1848-75, so a publication date of 1850 seems odd. Separately, maybe it's notable that the American Concession happened in 1848 and seems to somewhat comprise Hongkew, so I reckon it must have been romanized in some way in the process. Or maybe William Jones Boone already did it earlier. ChromeGames (talk) 07:06, 23 September 2021 (UTC)