Kunming

See also: K'un-ming and Kūnmíng

English

Alternative forms

• K'un-ming (Wade–Giles)

Etymology

From Mandarin 昆明 (Kūnmíng).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kʊnˈmɪŋ/
• enPR: ko͝onʹmǐngʹ

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

Proper noun

Kunming

1. A prefecture-level city, the provincial capital of Yunnan, in southwestern China.
   • 1930 December 31 [1930 December 30], “Rebel Army Enters Yunnan.”, in Hongkong Daily Press‎^[1], number 2260, page 9, column 4:

     Military movements are reported to be proceeding in the region of Kunming.

   • 1943, Hubert Freyn, Free China's New Deal‎^[2], New York: Macmillan Company, →OCLC, page 63:

     Best known abroad are Free China’s two "back doors," the Burma Road and the Northwest Highway. The 960-mile road from Kunming to Lashio was a vast engineering feat and, after the outbreak of the Pacific war, China’s main hope for obtaining offensive armaments. In the last month before its closing it carried over 30,000 tons.

   • 1944 April 24, “Trouble in Burma”, in Life‎^[3], volume 16, number 17, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 25, column 1:

     Last week's focus of the war in the Far East centered squarely upon this little railroad. Because it brings supplies to the Assam Valley airfields, whence they can be flown over the "Hump" to Kunming, it is a vital part of our only link with China.

   • 1975 March 23, “Freedom at last for Wu & son”, in Free China Weekly‎^[4], volume XVI, number 11, Taipei, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1:

     Hsiao-hua, who studied at a primary school at Kunming before he fled the mainland with his father, said he was often criticized by his classmates for his association with "bad elements." All school children on the Chinese mainland, he added, must do forced manual work and read "Quotations from Mao Tse-tung."

   • 1980, Wanda Cornelius, Thayne Short, Ding Hao: America's Air War in China, 1937-1945‎^[5], Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 94-95:

     In some cases, over a hundred thousand men, women, and children could be seen building five-thousand-foot solid runways for huge bombers of a type not yet built in America. These fields were being built in places east of Kunming, places with strange-sounding names like Liuchow, Kweilin, Lingling, and Hengyang, names which would all too soon become quite familiar to hundred of American airmen.

   • 2022 January 23, Muyu Xu, David Stanway, “Biodiversity talks in China's Kunming in April may be affected by COVID”, in Christian Schmollinger, editor, Reuters‎^[6], archived from the original on 24 January 2022, Environment:

     The schedule of the second phase of the COP15 global biodiversity talks in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming in April is "likely to be affected" by new COVID-19 risks, environment ministry spokesman Liu Youbin said on Monday.
     The second phase was supposed to see the completion of a new post-2020 global deal on biodiversity protection, following on the first round of talks in Kunming last October.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Kunming.

Derived terms

• Kunming Lake

Translations

a prefecture-level city in southwestern China

• Arabic: كُونْمِينْج m (kunming), كُونْمِينْج m (kunming), كُونْمِينْغ m (kunminḡ), كُونْمِينْغ m (kunming)
• Bulgarian: Кунми́н m (Kunmín)
• Burmese: ကူမင်းမြို့ (kumang:mrui.)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 昆明 (kwan¹ ming⁴)

  Hokkien: 昆明 (Khun-bêng)

  Mandarin: 昆明 (zh) (Kūnmíng)

• Hebrew: קונמינג
• Hindi: कुनमिंग (kunmiṅg)
• Hungarian: Kunming (hu)
• Japanese: 昆明 (こんめい, Konmei)
• Korean: 쿤밍 (Kunming)
• Lao: ຄຸນ​ໝິງ (khun ming)
• Lü: ᦵᦙᦲᧂᦶᦉ (moengṡae)
• Macedonian: Кунминг m (Kunming)
• Nuosu: ꈈꂱ (ko mip)
• Portuguese: Kunming f
• Russian: Куньми́н m (Kunʹmín)
• Shan: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: Kunming (es) m
• Thai: คุนหมิง (kunmĭng)
• Ukrainian: Куньмі́н m (Kunʹmín)
• Vietnamese: Côn Minh (vi)
• Zhuang: Gunhmingz

Further reading

• Kunming in Encyclopædia Britannica
• Kunming, K'un-ming, K'unming, Kun-ming at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
• “Kunming, pn.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “Kunming”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “Kunming” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.
• Saul B. Cohen, editor (1998), “Kunming”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[7], volume 2, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 1631, column 1: “Formerly called Yunnanfu.”

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from Mandarin 昆明 (Kūnmíng).

Proper noun

Kunming f

1. Kunming (a prefecture-level city, the provincial capital of Yunnan, in southwestern China)

Spanish

Proper noun

Kunming ?

1. Kunming (a prefecture-level city, the provincial capital of Yunnan, in southwestern China)