Xi'an

The story

1. Chinese · derived from西安
2. English todayXi'an

c. mid/late 20th c., the atonal Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 西安 (Xī'ān), usually glossed as meaning "Western Peace" but inclusive of the idea of "Western Pacification" or "Pacified Area", first adopted under the Ming Dynasty in 1369 as the city was conquered from the Yuan and protected with a new wall. An apostrophe is usually required in pinyin to mark any non-initial syllable beginning with a, o, or e in a multi-syllable word. (See 隔音符號 /隔音符号 (géyīn fúhào) for more.) In this case, the apostrophe happens to distinguish the two separate syllables of xī and ān from the monosyllabic words xiān, xián, xiǎn, and xiàn.