 Tokyo was originally known as , a kanji compound of 江 (''e'', "cove, inlet") and 戸 (''to'', "entrance, gate, door"). The name, which can be translated as "estuary", is a reference to the original settlement's location at the meeting of the Sumida River and Tokyo Bay. During the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the name of the city was changed to , when it became the new imperial capital, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital () in the name of the capital city (for example, Kyoto (), Keijō (), Beijing (), Nanjing (), and Xijing ()). During the early Meiji period, the city was sometimes called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph. Some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei"; however, this pronunciation is now obsolete.