Xiangyang is obviously located south of the Han River and should be called Xiangyin. Why is it called Xiangyang?

Many place names in our country mostly follow the convention of "mountains to the south and water to the north as yang". For example, the ancient capital Luoyang was named because it was located north of the Luo River; Hanyang was also named because it was located north of the Han River. .

But the place name Xiangyang seems to be different. Xiangyang is located to the north of Yanshan Mountain and south of Hanshui (Hanjiang River). According to common sense, it should be called Xiangyin. So why is it called Xiangyang?

There is a reason why the ancients had a naming convention such as "mountains to the south and water to the north are yang". Because the mountains to the south and the north to the north are related to sunshine, yin and yang are easy to understand. The yin and yang of rivers are the opposite, also due to the relationship between sunlight. Because the river is low-lying, the sun shines from the south. The north bank of the river will naturally receive more sunlight because it is not blocked. However, if the height difference on the south bank of the river is relatively large, it is likely that the sun will not shine on it.

So, what does the word "xiang" in Xiangyang's name have to do with Hanshui? In fact, just like the Yangtze River has different names in different regions from the upper reaches to the lower reaches (for example, the area above Yibin is called Jinsha River, and the area from Zhicheng to Chenglingji is called Jingjiang River, etc.), the Han River from Xiangyang to the lower reaches was also called "Xiangshui" in ancient times. Or "Xianghe". It is more likely that the Han River is called Xianghe (or Xiangshui) here because it already has the name Xiangyang.

There is also a theory that because Xiangyang is located to the south of the Han River and north of Yanshan Mountain, it looks like double yin. In fact, in Feng Shui, it is a pattern of "negative yin and embrace yang, surrounded by gold belt". You can turn double yin into double yang.

But we also found that there seem to be many place names that are similar to the name of Xiangyang and come from the opposite direction. For example, Hanyang (located in Hanyang District, Wuhan City) is located to the south of the Han River. But it is not called Hanyin, but Hanyang. That's because in ancient times, Hanyang was located to the north of the Han River. Historically, the Han River changed its course from the south of Hanyang to the north of Hanyang. This special situation exists not only in Hanyang, but also in Huaiyin (Huaiyin District, Huai'an City, Jiangsu Province). It was originally south of the Huaihe River. Later, due to the change of the Huaihe River, its location became north of the Huaihe River.