Before it was romanized as Hong Kong, the special administrative region of China that has long beguiled visitors was known in English as He-Ong-Kong. That moniker dates back to 1780 and is thought to be a phonetic reading of hēung góng, a Cantonese name that translates to both “fragrant harbor” and “incense harbor.”
Hong Kong has long been one of the world's most important commercial ports. The apparently sweet-tasting waters of the Pearl River may have been responsible for the “fragrant” designation; as for the other, a number of incense factories used to be found in the city’s Kowloon district. An alternate explanation comes courtesy of John Davis, who served as Governor of Hong Kong from 1844 to 1848 and said that the name came from “Hoong-keang” (“red torrent”). According to him, the name honored the red soil found beneath a waterfall on Hong Kong Island.
