Tonkin

Tonkin, also spelled Tongking, is the northernmost part of Vietnam, south of China's Yunnan and Guangxi, east of northern Laos, and west of the Gulf of Tonkin. Locally, it is known as Bắc Bộ (北圻), meaning "Northern Boundary".

Hanoi has been the capital of the Chinese Tonkin since the 7th century, when it was called Dongjing (東京), meaning "Eastern Capital." "Tonkin" is the Vietnamese pronunciation of "Dongjing."

France assumed sovereignty over Annam and Tonkin after the Franco-Chinese War (1884-1885). The French used the name of the capital for the entire region under its jurisdiction.

The other two parts of Vietnam were Annam at the central, and Cochin China at the south.

Located on the fertile delta of the Red River, Tonkin is rich in rice production.

The Latin adjective tonkinensis is a specific epithet, part of the binomial nomenclature, used to describe species, mostly trees, found in Tonkin. For example, Cornus hongkongensis subsp. tonkinensis [1] is a subspecies of an evergreen tree or shrub of the dogwood family that is usually found in Hong Kong, but this particularly subpecies have been located in Tonkin.

Modern Chinese sometimes call "Tonkin" Beibu (北部), based on the pronunciation of the Vietnamese Bắc Bộ, but not the characters.

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Tonkin is a very rare Romanization of Tokyo, possibly based on Korean or Chinese.