Yuanqu County (Shandong)

Yuanqu or Wanqu County, known as Wanting County after 1086, was a former county of imperial China covering most of present-day Dongming County and the western part of Mudan District in the Heze Prefecture of southwestern Shandong. Yuanqu or Wanqu was also the name of its eponymous county seat. The town was destroyed by a flood of the Yellow River in 1168, and its territory merged with Jiyin County. The ruins of the county seat were rediscovered at Longwangmiao Village in southwestern Mudan District in June 2007 by a team of archaeologists from the district government.

Name

Yuānqú is the pinyin romanization of the present Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese placename 冤句. Because the character 句 is now usually pronounced jù in its sense of "phrase" or "sentence", the town and county's name is frequently misread as Yuānjù in English sources. Although 句 now has the variant readings qú, jù, gōu, and gòu in different contexts, the Old Chinese pronunciation of all of these has been reconstructed as /*[k]ˤ(r)o.../ or as /*ko.../, with slightly different terminal consonants later developing into the modern pronunciations. Similarly, both 冤 and 宛 were originally pronounced /*qon/, leading to their interchangeable use in ancient records about the county.

Both characters in the name—meaning "curvy" or "bent"—refer to the meandering course of the Ji River, a major river which once flowed through the area but whose bed was assumed by the Yellow River during its massive 1852 flood. Lin Chuanjia further claims that "Yuan" (冤) was an occasional ancient name for the Ji.