Why go
Aberdeen offers a useful counterpoint to Victoria Harbour when thinking about the city’s beginnings. The name once described a smaller inlet on the island’s south coast. Incense trading provides one explanation, while a fresh-water interpretation and different accounts of the romanisation keep the origin from being a settled story.
The full story
The characters 香港 mean “fragrant harbour” or “incense harbour”. Before the name applied to the whole island in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, it referred to the inlet now known as Aberdeen Harbour, between the island’s southern coast and Aberdeen Island. This was a point of contact between British sailors and local fishing communities. One explanation connects the fragrance with incense products stored near Aberdeen for export. Another associates it with fresh water entering the harbour. Accounts of how the spoken name became “Hong Kong” also differ, including possible Cantonese, Hakka and Tanka connections. None needs to be treated as certain to appreciate the link between the name and maritime trade. The spelling “Hongkong” persisted before the two-word form was adopted in 1926. Older institutional names, including Hongkong Electric and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, preserve that earlier spelling.