The Origin of the Name Lishui

The question

Where the two characters of the name Lishui come from is the hardest of the questions examined on this site. Before it begins its annals, the first juan of the Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer attaches a long inquiry devoted to the matter. The older gazetteers had carried "The Name of the County" as a section of its own; the Kangxi compilers thought other gazetteers had no such section, and so attached it to the head of the annalistic volume. The value of the inquiry lies not in a conclusion but in the way it sets out each account in turn and says plainly that it "does not venture to decide". This entry follows its lines and sets out the accounts and their disagreements.

The two accounts of the old gazetteers

The earliest account comes from the Zhengde and Jiajing gazetteers: Lishui is Laishui, the Wu pronunciation having turned "Lai" into "Li"; and the name Liyang was taken from its position north of the water, north of a river being yang — Lishui having been detached from Liyang, it inherited the character in turn.

旧志曰：正德、嘉靖二志皆云，溧水者，濑水也。吴音讹「濑」为「溧」耳。溧阳之名，以其在水之北，水以北为阳。而溧水又析于溧阳，名遂因之也。议者为「溧」「濑」相悬，讹至是耶？

Translated: The old gazetteer says: the Zhengde and Jiajing editions both hold that Lishui is Laishui, the Wu pronunciation having corrupted "Lai" into "Li". The name Liyang was taken from its position north of the water, north of a river being yang; and since Lishui was detached from Liyang, the name came with it. Those who argue the point ask whether "Li" and "Lai" are so far apart that such a corruption could occur.

The Kangxi compilers did not simply adopt this. They recorded with it the objection of the time — that the sounds of "Li" and "Lai" are too far apart for the corruption to be plausible — and that objection is the starting point of everything that follows.

Lai and Li in the Spring and Autumn Annals

Against the objection, the compilers offered a phonological remedy. They cite the Spring and Autumn Annals for the fourth year of Duke Zhao of Lu, "Chu attacked Wu and destroyed Lai", noting that Lai is the later Laishui; and they cite the Gongyang and Guliang commentaries, which write Lai as Li, a character much closer to "Li" and therefore easily confused with it.

按《春秋》：「鲁昭公四年，楚伐吴，遂灭赖。」赖即今之濑也。《公羊》《穀梁》二传并以「赖」作「厉」，「厉」则去「溧」甚近，而讹之易矣。

Translated: Checking the Spring and Autumn Annals: "In the fourth year of Duke Zhao of Lu, Chu attacked Wu and destroyed Lai." Lai is the present Laishui. Both the Gongyang and Guliang commentaries write "Lai" as "Li", and "Li" is close enough to "Lishui's Li" for the corruption to be easy.

Two further supports are added: the Han geographical treatise lists a Sui county, Sui being the ancient state of Li, and the Zhuangzi's "Heaven and Earth" chapter speaks of a man of Li; all these "Li" are read as "Lai", which shows the two could interchange. As for where the old gazetteers' account came from, the compilers still say that it "cannot be traced, no history or other book recording it".

The notes of Ying Shao and Sima Zhen

The third layer is a disagreement among commentators. Under Liyang in the Han geographical treatise, Ying Shao notes that it is "the Southern Lake from which the Lishui flows"; and in the notes to the Grand Historian's life of Wu Yuan, where Liyang appears, Sima Zhen reads the character as "Li" in the sense of "chestnut".

又，前汉《地理志》「溧阳」，应劭注云「溧水所出南湖也」。今宣城有南湖，若应注指此，则以「赖」为「溧」者，大谬矣。

Translated: Again, under "Liyang" in the Former Han geographical treatise, Ying Shao notes: "the Southern Lake from which the Lishui flows." There is a Southern Lake in Xuancheng today; if Ying Shao's note means that lake, then to take "Lai" for "Li" would be a great error.

The compilers go on to dispute how Ying Shao's note should be punctuated. The Yingtian and Liyang gazetteers both cite it as evidence, but drop the two particles "from which" and "is", leaving the sense darker still. They hold that the note should be read as "Lishui's outflow" belonging with "Liyang" above, and "the Southern Lake is it" as a sentence of its own: the meaning being that Liyang has a Lishui, and that Lishui is the Southern Lake. Read the other way, as "the Lishui issues from the Southern Lake", the two particles have nowhere to stand. They add that the Yingtian gazetteer's line "Lishui is also called Laishui" is close to the two older accounts, yet it too cites the Southern Lake in evidence, so that "its purport cannot be made out".

The Liyang gazetteer's derivation from a hill

A fourth account is that of the Liyang gazetteer, which states directly that north of You Mountain in Gaochun there are two peaks formerly called Li Mountain, that the water running below them and flowing south into the lake is the Lishui, and that the old county seat of Liyang lay to their north, the county name having begun there.

至于《溧阳志》，则直指高淳游山之北有二峰，原名溧山，水经其下，而南流入湖者为溧水，溧阳旧县正在其北，而县名实起于此。

Translated: As for the Liyang gazetteer, it states directly that north of You Mountain in Gaochun there are two peaks, formerly called Li Mountain; that the water passing below them and flowing south into the lake is the Lishui; and that the old county seat of Liyang stood to their north, the county name having in fact begun there.

The compilers put several questions to this. If the water took its name from the hill, then wherever "Li" appears the hill and the water should be named together; why then do Sima Zhen's commentary on the Grand Historian and Du You's Comprehensive Institutions both speak of Li only as a water? The History of the Jin and Ying Shao's note both say "Liyang, from which the Lishui flows", so why does neither mention a hill? They add that Liyang only moved to Lai territory in the Tang, and that it originally stood at Gucheng, where "the name owed nothing to Lai" — yet Gucheng is none other than the Spring and Autumn Laizhu settlement, so where did its name come from? As for the Southern Lake, they say that "no water has ever been seen coming from Li Mountain", and that even if some did, it would be a thin runnel in the lake, too slight to name a county after. They also cite Fan Huan in the Stratagems of the Warring States, "to the south one surveys Lai Lake", to show that Lai too was once used of a lake; and since Lai and the Southern Lake both lie more than a hundred li from Gucheng and both to its west, the lake Ying Shao meant may well have been the Laishui.

The argument from the meaning of the characters

All of the above turns on sounds and places. The compilers also offer a gentler explanation drawn from the sense of the characters.

溧水、濑水二名同实，旧志辩之晰矣，然卒莫详其义之所由起也。考「濑」之释义，则水流沙上也。「溧」者，水之凛栗而流下至急也。

Translated: Lishui and Laishui are two names for one thing, and the old gazetteer distinguishes them clearly; yet in the end it does not explain where the sense of either began. The gloss of "Lai" is water running over sand. "Li" is water flowing down cold and swift.

By their observation the Lishui "runs from Lu Mountain in the east straight down to the Qinhuai, never stilling or gathering, swelling in spring and drying in winter, its current deep and never slack", so that the name "very likely took this sense". They add at once, however, that "this too is only a guess". They note further that Pingling and Lingping in the Annals were "named from the hills", while such names as Yongping, Yong'an and Gaoping "lasted only briefly and cannot be traced to any sense".

How this site treats it

The inquiry's conclusion is left open:

然吾终莫考其何自来矣，诚未敢臆断，始详诸家之说而稍酌之，以备后考云。

Translated: Yet in the end I cannot trace where it came from, and truly do not venture to decide. I therefore set out the accounts of the several schools in full and weigh them a little, to await later inquiry.

This site does the same, and does not pronounce where the gazetteer did not. Three points need stating. First, Laishui and the Laizhu settlement belong to the Spring and Autumn period, Liyang appears with the Qin founding of a county there, and Lishui as a county name appears only in the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era (591 CE), when the county was detached from Liyang — the Guangxu gazetteer's own prefatory rules likewise say that "Lishui was made a county from the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era". The layering of names and the layering of administrative units do not keep step, and conflating the three is a common error. Second, what the gazetteer examines is the origin of the character "Li", not the beginning of Lishui as an administrative unit; the two should not be run together. Third, the founding of the county and the changes of superior authority are treated in the entries on the Sui and Tang administrative history; the name is discussed only here. The confidence is set at medium precisely because the gazetteer itself "did not venture to decide".