![]() “… when but 19, graduated as honor man from the civil engineering class of Purdue University then entered Standard Oil class for foreign service. Īccording to Norma Babcock in The Catalina Islander, April 16, 1924, her husband Lethin and the Mah-Jongg Company of China et al’). So we turn to this important figure and to the probable origin of his name for his variation of the Chinese game (references for his travel dates and locations may be found in the article ‘J. From what he had observed to be the fundamental Chinese game, he devised a version that he subsequently patented under the designation “Mah-Jongg”. Babcock was one of the first to significantly popularise the game in the West. Babcock, features prominently when discussing the game from a Western perspective. Babcock, Mah-Jongg and Ma Jiang.īefore the discussion on the earliest names of the game mahjong that have so far been documented, it would be remiss not to mention the situation at the turn of the 1920’s. See Footnote 1 for an etymological hypothesis for this term by Hongbing Xu.įor the card game (not necessarily the same game as the tile game) of 麻雀 the pronunciation is má què.ġ912 – 1923. Babcock arrived at the name Mah-Jongg (pronounced “Mah-ZHONG” according to Babcock in The Saturday Evening Post, Dec. This pronunciation of má jiàng for the tile game and the discussion below allow us to hypothesise how J. The earliest record of this written form for má jiàng appeared in a 1913 issue of the Shanghai Shen Bao newspaper. The pronunciation má jiàng eventually had its own written form 麻將 to represent the tile game. Therefore in this article, where the name for the tile game is written as 麻雀, the pronunciation will appear as mo ziang, and in parentheses as the Mandarin pronunciation má jiàng. The original and correct pronunciation of the name for the tile game of 麻雀 is taken to be mo ziang in Shanghainese and má jiàng in Mandarin (based on the Beijing dialect)). The Name of the Tile Game and the Name of the Card Game as used in this Article. The authors’ added comments to quotations appear in square parentheses. If it is to be used, please provide the relevant citations in full.Ĭhinese characters (sinograms) appear throughout the text and have, in many cases, been accented. The information presented below is the result of painstaking research by Hongbing Xu and Michael Stanwick. Where appropriate we have drawn inferences from the evidence presented, the conclusions of which we hope these will act as predictions for further research.įinally, a discussion of Stewart Culin’s 1924 description of a tile set he collected in 1909 will reveal that as well as his tile set, he also referenced a domino tile set and indirectly referenced another game that subsequently became confused with his májiàng tile set.īefore reading further, it is advised that articles in the ‘Tile Set History’ section be read first, so as to provide context to the information and the references in this discussion. These terms and conditions result from the latest research into key documentation such as Chinese novels, memoirs, Chinese newspaper records and published accounts of Chinese playing card games from Western anthropologists from the 19th and early 20th centuries. We also introduce and discuss certain social conditions that prevailed in regions around Shanghai and allowed the game to spread in popularity during the latter half of the 19th century. The main discussion in this article however, concerns the various terms that have been associated with the pre 1920 tile games that led to the development of the game of 麻雀 májiàng, versions of which became known in the West as Mah jong(g). Babcock’s name for his variant of the game of ‘Sparrows”. Documentary evidence sheds valuable light on the Babcocks whereabouts during their stay in China between 19 and hence on how Joseph Babcock perhaps acquired the pronunciation of the name of his game. This article begins with a discussion of the derivation of J. ![]()
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