Ginling College
The city first became a Chinese national capital as early as the Jin dynasty. The name Nanjing, which means "Southern Capital", was officially designated for the city during the Ming dynasty, about six hundred years later. Nanjing is sometimes known as Jinling or Ginling (, "Gold Hill") of the eponymous Ginling College; the old name has been used since the Warring States period in the Zhou dynasty. In English, the spelling Nanking was traditional until Pinyin-developed in the 1950s and internationally adopted in the 1980s- standardized the spelling as "Nanjing".