Hong Taiji

Hong Taiji (28 November 1592 – 21 September 1643), sometimes rendered as Huang Taiji and occasionally referred to as Abahai in Western literature, also known by his temple name Emperor Taizong of Qing, was the second khan of the Later Jin dynasty and the founding emperor of the Qing dynasty. He was responsible for consolidating the empire that his father Nurhaci had founded and laid the groundwork for the conquest of the Ming dynasty, although he died before this was accomplished. He conquered Inner Mongolia and the remainder of Manchuria and invaded Korea, which became a Qing tributary state. He was also responsible for changing the name of the Jurchens to "Manchu" in 1635, and changing the name of his dynasty from "Great Jin" to "Great Qing" in 1636.

Names and titles

It is unclear whether "Hong Taiji" was a title or a personal name. Written in Manchu, hong taiji was borrowed from the Mongolian title khong tayiji. That Mongolian term was itself derived from the Chinese huang taizi (皇太子; "crown prince"), but in Mongolian it meant, among other things, something similar to "respected son". Alternatively, historian Pamela Crossley argues that "Hung Taiji" was a title "of Mongolian inspiration" derived from hung, a word that appeared in other Mongolian titles at the time. Early seventeenth-century Chinese and Korean sources rendered his name as "Hong Taiji" (洪台極). The modern Chinese rendering "Huang Taiji" (皇太極), which uses the character huang (皇; "imperial"), misleadingly implies that Hong Taiji once held the title of heir apparent, even though his father Nurhaci never designated a successor.