Quick Tables to Generate Chinese Province Names

I have received very positive feedback on my post about the creation of on-the-fly Chinese town and city names. Therefore I am now providing a post on how to create Chinese-sounding province names.

Chinese provinces haven't always had the same name (and area) as today. For GMs who like their games to be historically accurate, it is easy to look up the right names of the provinces for a given dynasty in a history atlas or on Wikipedia. For GMs who like to play in a generic fantasy China à la Dragon Lines, I believe this post should come in handy.

Much like Chinese towns and cities, Chinese provinces usually have a two-syllable name. The first syllable is either a proper noun (often the name of a river or of a salient place name from the province itself) or an epithet for the second syllable, which itself is more often than not a common noun.

The following tables will create realistically-sounding names for your Chinese provinces. First roll a D20 for the first syllable from Table 1, then roll a D12 for the second syllable from Table 2. Voilà, you have a fairly nicely sounding name for your Chinese province.

Table 1 (D20)

1. Ān (peaceful)
2. Fèng (respectful)
3. Fú (happy)
4. Guān (frontier pass)
5. Guǎng (expanse)
6. Hé (river)
7. Hú (lake)
8. Jiāng (river)
9. Jīng (bramble)
10. Lì (merit)
11. Lín (descend)
12. Lǐng (mountain ridge)
13. Níng (peaceful)
14. Shān (mountain range)
15. Shǎn (mountain pass)
16. Tóng (lofty)
17. Xián (united)
18. Xīn (new)
19. Yǒng (eternal)
20. Yún (misty [mountains])

Table 2 (D12)

1. běi (north)
2. chuān (circuit)
3. dōng (east)
4. jī (domain)
5. jiàn (establishment)
6. jiāng (疆, frontier)
7. jiāng (江, river)
8. nán (south)
9. nèi (inside)
10. xī (west)
11. yòu (west)
12. yuán (plain)