section_path: Etymology/Chinese
section_name: Chinese
paragraph_text: Chinese
  
  Cháng Jiāng (长江; 長江) or " Long River " is the official name for the Yangtze in Mandarin Chinese. However, the Chinese have given different names to the upstream sections of the river up to its confluence with the Min River at Yibin, Sichuan. Jinsha River ("Gold Sands River") refers to the 2,308 km (1,434 mi) of the Yangtze from Yibin upstream to the confluence with the Batang River near Yushu in Qinghai, while the Tongtian River ("River that leads to Heaven") describes the 813 km (505 mi) section from Yushu up to the confluence of the Tuotuo River and the Dangqu River.
  
  In Old Chinese, the Yangtze was simply called Jiang/Kiang 江, a character of phono-semantic compound origin, combining the water radical 氵 with the homophone 工 (now pronounced gōng, but *kˤoŋ in Old Chinese). Kong was probably a word in the Austroasiatic language of local peoples such as the Yue. Similar to *krong in Proto-Vietnamese and krung in Mon, all meaning "river", it is related to modern Vietnamese sông (river) and Khmer krung (city on riverside), whence Thai krung (กรุง capital city), not kôngkea (water) which is from the Sanskrit root gáṅgā.
  
  By the Han dynasty, Jiāng had come to mean any river in Chinese, and this river was distinguished as the "Great River" 大江 (Dàjiāng). The epithet 長 (simplified version 长), meaning "long", was first formally applied to the river during the Six Dynasties period.
  
  Various sections of the Yangtze have local names. From Yibin to Yichang, the river through Sichuan and Chongqing Municipality is also known as the Chuān Jiāng (川江) or " Sichuan River ". In Hubei, the river is also called the Jīng Jiāng (荆江; 荊江) or the "Jing River" after Jingzhou, one of the Nine Provinces of ancient China. In Anhui, the river takes on the local name Wǎn Jiāng after the shorthand name for Anhui, wǎn (皖). Yángzǐ Jiāng (揚子江; 扬子江) or the "Yangzi River", from which the English name Yangtze is derived, is the local name for the Lower Yangtze in the region of Yangzhou. The name likely comes from an ancient ferry crossing called Yángzǐ or Yángzǐjīn (揚子 / 揚子津). Europeans who arrived in the Yangtze River Delta region applied this local name to the whole river. The dividing site between upstream and midstream is considered to be at Yichang and that between midstream and downstream at Hukou (Jiujiang).