What is the origin of "Gezhuang" in Beijing's place name "X Gezhuang"?

There are many villages in Beijing and Hebei with the word "Ge" in their names, such as Zhanggezhuang, Yanggezhuang, panggezhuang and Yuegezhuang in Beijing, Lianggezhuang, Liugezhuang, Baigezhuang and Hugezhuang in Hebei, etc. The first word of these village names is surname, which shows that this village has been closely related to a surname in history; Some surnames of Zhuang surname Qianguan are still the "big surnames" in the village. However, it is puzzling: the meaning of the word "Ge" in these village names.

What is this?

In fact, the word "Ge" in the village name is originally the word "home". Zhanggezhuang is zhang jia zhuang and Yanggezhuang is Yangjiazhuang. So, how did "home" become "each"? This question will be answered from the history of the development and evolution of Chinese pronunciation.

Language, like everything in the world, is in constant development and change. The pronunciation of Chinese has changed obviously and regularly since ancient times. The initials J, Q and X in modern Chinese are evolved from Z, C, S and G, K and H, and the change condition is that these two initials are spelled with I or ü. When Z, C, S, G, K and H are spelled with I or ü, their pronunciation parts are "assimilated" by I and U and become J, Q and X. For example, in modern Mandarin, "Jiang" and "Jiang" are both pronounced as jiāng, and their initials are all J; However, in ancient Chinese, their initials were Z and G respectively. Take the word "home" for example. In modern Mandarin, it is pronounced jiā, and the initial is J; In the Middle Ages (represented by the phonology of Guang Yun), it was pronounced ga, and the initial was G; In modern dialects, the word "Jia" is also pronounced as g-, such as gu in Jiangsu and Zhejiang dialects and ga in Cantonese (for the convenience of readers, this paper uses the Chinese Pinyin scheme to mark ancient sounds and dialect sounds, and the sound values are similar. ), belonging to the northern dialect, is pronounced "a". It is relatively recent that G changed into J. The phonology of the Central Plains (written by Zhou Deqing in Yuan Dynasty) written in A.D. 1324 has not reflected this change. In other words, G became J not earlier than14th century. Even today, we can still see traces of this change, such as "Jiao" (Ji MuluT) and "Jiao" (Gā lá) in Beijing dialect; "jiāng sound" is called gāng sound in Beijing dialect, and so on.

From the Middle Ages (from the 4th century A.D. to before12nd century A.D.) to modern times, the pronunciation of the word "Jia" experienced the evolution of Ga-Ga-Jia. The word "Jia" in the village name of Xjiazhuang retains the pronunciation of the ancient sound, and the initial is G instead of J. Because the word "Jia" is softly pronounced in the village name, its pronunciation is far from that of "Jia" in modern Mandarin, but very close to that of "Ge". Over time, the writing form has also changed, so "home" has become "each".

Encyclopedia knowledge, No.2, 1986.

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