It is Nanking and Peking not Pakking and Namking because you are confusing these early romanisations with the Jyut Ping which is a later linguistic invention They are also not all romanised according to English The British invaders came the last They were first romanised by an Italian Missionary called Ricci and then by the French missionaries That is why Guangdong is written as Canton Canton was never meant to be an English romanisation If you pronounce it in French it sound exactly like the Cantonese pronunciation of it even today Same thing for Peking and Nanking When you pronounce them in French Italian they sound more like the original Cantonese vernacular variant Do not be so quick to dismiss what you do not know or understand because one day when you need someone to understand you when you are old ugly and lonely others will also dismiss you in the same way