Cathay Pacific September 1946 as "Cathay Pacific Airways Limited", while another sister company The Roy Farrell Export Import Company (Hong Kong) Limited was incorporated on 28 August 1946 and chartered some flights of Cathay. According to "International Directory of Company Histories", forming two companies are for tax purposes. They named the airline "Cathay", the ancient name given to China, and "Pacific" because Farrell speculated that they would one day fly across the Pacific (which happened in the 1970s). Moreover, to avoid the name "Air Cathay" as it was already occurred in a comic. The Chinese name for the company ("") was not
Cathay his "Book on the Administration of the State", apparently as two separate countries (presumably, referring to the Liao and Song Empires, respectively). The name's currency in the Muslim world survived the replacement of the Khitan Liao dynasty with the Jurchen Jin dynasty in the early 12th century. When describing the fall of the Jin Empire to the Mongols (1234), Persian history described the conquered country as "Khitāy" or "Djerdaj Khitāy" (i.e., "Jurchen Cathay"). The Mongols themselves, in their "Secret History" (13th century) talk of both Khitans and Kara-Khitans. In about 1340 Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, a merchant from Florence, compiled the