日本學者稻葉岩吉最早指出鴨綠江的支流渾江在明代有「橫江」之名，但這一觀點從未得到證實。通過爬梳熊廷弼〈勘覆地界疏〉、《狀啓謄錄》等文獻的記載可知，該觀點是成立的。橫江還從河流名稱引申為區域名稱。直到成化朝（1465-1487）為止，明朝官方只是對朝鮮王朝（1392-1919）用以稱呼渾江的「婆豬江」地名稍有了解，此後長期對渾江缺乏認知。萬曆三十六、三十七年（1608、1609）間，熊廷弼在遼東的勘界調查，使「橫江」一名得以廣泛傳佈。明末遼東戰事爆發後，明朝不少官僚士人都重視橫江的軍事地理價值。但隨著明亡清興，以及這一歷史進程中的邊疆人群瓦解，流域封禁，橫江失去了穩固為官方地名的機會，不再見諸文獻記載。

The Japanese scholar Inaba Iwakichi was the first to point out that, during the Ming dynasty, the Hun River, a tributary of the Yalu River, had been called Hengjiang, but this view had not been independently confirmed. After combing through and analyzing Xiong Tingbi’s “Kanfu Dijie Shu,” “Zhuangqi Tenglu,” and other documents, it can be verified that this view is indeed correct. Hengjiang was further extended from a river name to a regional name. Up until the Chenghua reign (1465-1487), the Ming officials were only vaguely familiar with the name Pajeogang used by the Choson dynasty (1392-1919) to address the Hun River, but from that time onward, they had little awareness of the Hun River. However, Xiong Tingbi’s survey of the national boundary in Liaodong carried out during the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh years of the Wanli reign (1608, 1609) made it widespread. After the Liaodong War broke out in the late Ming, many officials and scholars attached importance to the military geographic value of the name Hengjiang and its river and territory. However, with the fall of the Ming and the rise of the Qing dynasty, as well as the collapse of the frontier people and the closure of the watershed basin in this historical process, the name Hengjiang lost the opportunity to become an official place name and its use was discontinued.