粵
世界 World Names
地名 Hong Kong Names The station wall · 98 stations
意頭 Luck & Signs
熱氣 Heat & Cooling
概念 Concepts
英文 Hong Kong English Two registers · 20,056 buildings
麻雀 Mahjong The whole set · 42 faces
錯 Kept by an outsider — mistakes get fixed in public. Corrections
粵

粵學院 · Canto Institute

文化為先，語言為證

Culture first. Language is the exhibit.

Not a language school. A collection — names taken apart, luck as a working system, food sorted by what it does to your body, and the handful of ideas that don't survive the trip into Mandarin. Kept by someone outside the culture, which is the point: outsiders notice what insiders stopped seeing.

藏品The collection

世界 sai3 gaai3

World Names

How Cantonese named the rest of the world — and what those names literally say.

5 exhibits → 地名 dei6 meng2

Hong Kong Names

What Hong Kong's place names mean, and what they were before.

3 exhibits → 意頭 ji3 tau4

Luck & Signs

Homophony as an operating system: numbers, puns, taboos.

2 exhibits → 熱氣 jit6 hei3

Heat & Cooling

A folk physics of the body, run entirely on food.

2 exhibits → 概念 koi3 nim6

Concepts

Ideas that don't land in Mandarin — the case for Cantonese as its own mind.

1 exhibit → 英文 jing1 man4*2

Hong Kong English

English words carrying Cantonese meanings — and the characters that turn up in twenty thousand building names.

1 exhibit → 麻雀 maa4 zoek3

Mahjong

A sparrow in Cantonese, a different word entirely in Mandarin — and 144 tiles with 42 faces.

0 exhibits →

一例One exhibit, as a sample

What a number is worth in Hong Kong, taken from the Transport Department's own published auction results. The argument is the empty row.

What Hong Kong pays for a number
Every numeric registration mark in the Transport Department's published top-ten auction prices. The other six places in that table are single letters.
28 HK$18.1m · 2016 18 HK$16.5m · 2008 9 HK$13m · 1994 88 HK$11.4m · 2025 四 No mark containing 4 appears anywhere in the top ten.
Prices as published by the Transport Department, which lists the ten highest since auctions began in 1973. 8 sounds like 發 faat, to prosper; 9 like 久 gau, lasting. 4 sounds like 死 sei.
Table view
MarkPriceYear
28HK$18.1m2016
18HK$16.5m2008
9HK$13.0m1994
88HK$11.4m2025
Any mark containing 4Does not appear in the top ten

新Recently added

大廈

A thousand mansions, none of them mansions

Hong Kong has 1,219 buildings with "Mansion" in the name. Almost none of them are large stately houses.

 花旗國

The flower-flag country

A dead name for America that is still alive inside a bank and a bottle of ginseng.

 美英德法

The flattery canon

Beautiful, heroic, virtuous, lawful — the great powers all got flattering names. The truth is duller and better.

方法How this is kept

Everything here is documented by someone who doesn't speak Cantonese. That isn't a disclaimer, it's the method — and it means mistakes are inevitable and get fixed in public rather than quietly. Read the method →

Notes from the collection

A short note when enough has accumulated to be worth sending — a few times a year, no more. No course, no lessons, nothing to buy.

You'll get one email asking you to confirm — nothing is sent until you do. Your address lives on our own server, is never sold or shared, and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe. Privacy.