The Orthography of Marco Polo's Toponyms

Abstract

When Marco Polo and Rustichello began their collaboration in writing the Description of the World, they were faced with a number of problems. Not the least of these was the question of writing toponyms (and other foreign words) for which there was no accepted orthography in Latin script. The many Chinese toponyms in the book, which were originally written with a non-alphabetic script, presented particular difficulties. The romanisation of Chinese has been an issue which has only recently been more or less satisfactorily resolved. Here, an exploratory foray is made into the complexities of the toponyms in Marco Polo's text, some of which are subjected to preliminary analysis. It is concluded that Marco's transcriptions seem generally accurate when compared with reconstructions of Yuan-period pronunciations of Chinese. It also seems clear that Marco heard a variety of pronunciations, including dialect pronunciations, which are reflected in the orthography. It appears that the toponyms are intended to be pronounced according to Italian phonology, even though Rustichello's original text was written in French. It is suggested that Pelliot's opinion that there was only one original orthography may not be correct, as there are indications that the orthographies used in the Zelada manuscript and Ramusio's edition may have been revised by Marco himself or under his direction.