Takao Prefecture
The name of "Takau" was restored in the late 1670s, when the town expanded drastically with immigrants from mainland China, and was kept through Taiwan's cession to the Japanese Empire in 1895. In his 1903 general history of Taiwan, US Consul to Formosa James W. Davidson relates that "Takow" was already a well-known name in English. In 1920, the name was changed to and administered the area under Takao Prefecture. While the new name had quite a different surface meaning, its pronunciation in Japanese sounded more or less the same as the old name spoken in Hokkien.