源於原住民族語的台灣鄉鎮地名探討

Taiwan Township Names Originated from Indigenous Etymology

全台灣鄉鎮地名源於原住民族語的共計有44個，此外尚有20個鄉鎮的舊地名源於原住民族語。本文探討這64個地名的由來，材料取自安倍明義、洪敏麟、以及廖忠俊。研究發現源於平埔族語的鄉鎮遠多於高山族，與各族群語言活力呈反比。語意方面，大多數源於社名，只有少數還知道語意。滿州、春日、民雄、玉井等地名源於原住民語，但改成日語近音之漢字，導致外觀不易判別。烏來、後龍、卓蘭、以及沙鹿等鄉鎮閩南語地名之所以發音例外，正是因為保留族語的語音。

There are 44 township names and 20 township traditional names originated from Indigenous etymology. We look into the origin of these 64 township names with the data adopted from Abe, Hung, and Liao's texts. It is found that most of these townships' names are rooted in Pinpu Indigenous origins rather than from Gaoshan ones, which is reverse to language vitality. Further, while most the townships' names are from borrowed from tribe names, only few of these names' meaning are discerned. While such names as Man-zhou, Chun-ri, Min-xiong, and Yu-jing are found to be of Indigenous origins, their semantic meanings are difficult to ascertain as they were replaced by Han characters with Japanese usages before the war. Only Wu-lai, Hou-long, Zhuo-lan, and Sha-lu's pronunciations in Hoklo Taiwanese (Southern Min) still retain their Indigenous phonemics.