The Peculiar Case of Pekin, Illinois and a Word That Shouldn't Be Associated With It
Pekin, Illinois is a city of about 29,000 people on the Illinois River. It was named in the 1830s after Peking, the old postal romanization of Beijing. That is the straightforward etymology. The problem is that the city's name sounds exactly like a racial slur directed at Chinese people, and over time some residents and visitors have treated that coincidence as more than a coincidence. The idea that Pekin is connected to anti-Chinese sentiment is not entirely baseless, but it is also not a clean story. There is a local history to confront. The Midwest had a serious Chinese exclusion era. There were anti-Chinese riots in nearby cities. Illinois passed laws restricting Chinese labor in the late 1800s. Pekin itself had Chinese residents working in laundries and restaurants during the tail end of that period, though not in large numbers. The local papers from the 1890s contain the kind of xenophobic language that was normal then and abhorrent now. What I found when I dug into this a few years back was that most people online who claim Pekin is "just a cover for the slur" are skipping over the actual naming records. The Pekin Land Company formed in 1830 chose the name deliberately to reference China's capital, following a trend of American towns named after foreign places. Peoria, Springfield, Quincy, Vandalia — Pekin fits right in. The sound-alike with the slur is exactly that: a sound-alike.
But acknowledging that does not erase the real history. I spent a weekend at the Tazewell County Historical Society looking at old city directories and cemetery records. The Chinese presence in Pekin was small, maybe a handful of families at any given time between 1880 and 1920. Still visible. Still facing hostility. The local Chinese community was centered around a few laundry businesses, and the social records show occasional friction with neighboring merchants. None of this is dramatic. It is just boring, documentable American racism. The debunking part is straightforward once you get past the internet shorthand. Pekin is not a coded slur. The name predates the modern usage of the word by several decades. The coincidence is unfortunate and it causes real harm when people use it carelessly. But it is a coincidence, not a conspiracy. The deeper work is confronting what actually happened here. I ran into a specific problem when trying to present this to a local community group. People came in with very strong opinions, and the conversation split immediately along two lines. One side insisted that mentioning the name at all was itself offensive and that the city should change its name. The other side argued that any discussion of the slur was harassment of the town and its residents. Both positions had blind spots. The first group often did not know the etymological record. The second group tended to treat the matter as closed and dismiss the actual history of Chinese residents in the area. Neither side was willing to sit with the uncomfortable middle ground.
My workaround was simple and practical. I asked everyone to agree on one thing before we started: we would look at primary sources first, opinions later. I brought copies of the 1870 and 1880 census schedules for Tazewell County, the land company records, and a few excerpts from the Peoria Daily Journal from the 1890s. Reading the actual documents changed the temperature in the room. You could not argue with a name on a birth certificate or a newspaper headline from 1893. The evidence did something that a debate never could. Here are the things people usually get wrong about this topic, and they matter. Pitfall one: Assuming that because the name sounds like the slur, it must have been chosen to evoke it. That is a logical error. Sound similarity is not intent. You would make the same mistake if you assumed a town called "Tank" was named to mock soldiers. It was not. Naming conventions in the 1830s followed different patterns entirely.
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Pitfall two: Assuming that because the name is coincidental, the local history is clean. This is the opposite error. The coincidence does not cancel out the documented racism. Both can be true at once. That is the point most people miss. Pitfall three: Treating Chinese American history in central Illinois as either nonexistent or limited to major cities like Chicago. This is factually wrong. Chinese immigrants lived and worked in smaller Illinois towns. They built businesses. They faced violence and exclusion. Their stories are in county records if someone actually looks for them. If you want to engage with this honestly, start with the archives. The Illinois State Archives in Springfield holds census data, naturalization records, and territorial government documents. The Tazewell County Clerk's office has property records going back to the 1830s. The Pekin Public Library has a local history room with newspaper microfilm. These are free, public, and not intimidating. You do not need special clearance. You just need to show up and ask.
One thing I want to be blunt about: this topic has real limitations as a conversation starter if you are not prepared. Bringing it up in a public forum without context will produce conflict. People interpret the slur very differently depending on their own history and proximity to it. A Chinese American resident of Pekin will have a very different relationship to the name than someone who arrived recently or someone who has never lived here. Neither position is invalid. They just require different approaches. The practical advice is to separate the etymology from the history and address each on its own terms. The etymology is a footnote. Pekin was named after Beijing. Period. The history is longer and messier. Chinese residents existed here. They faced discrimination. The town has not done a thorough public reckoning with that part of its past, and that omission is its own kind of harm. I have found that the most effective way to handle this in any setting is to lead with the documentary record and let the facts carry the weight. The records do not require anyone to feel guilty about a name choice they had nothing to do with. They do require acknowledgment of people who lived through racism in a place most people assume was untouched by it. That acknowledgment is not an attack. It is just basic accuracy.
There is no download link for this. There is no app or tool that resolves it. What exists are archives, a few academic papers on Chinese American settlement in the Midwest, and a growing number of local historians who are willing to look at uncomfortable material without turning away. If you want to learn more, the Chinese American Museum in Chicago has resources on Midwest settlement patterns. The University of Illinois has digitized some Illinois Chinese American newspapers through their digital library project. The Pekin historical society publishes an annual journal that occasionally covers this period. All of it is publicly accessible. The bottom line is that Pekin, Illinois is a real place with a real name and a real history. The sound-alike with a slur is unfortunate and it causes real pain when people use it carelessly. But the name itself is not the slur. The history behind it is more important to confront than the name ever was.
