How names tell us a story, Part 3: Ap Lei Pai is the wrong name

Bare text can only tell us so much. How many of us have ground our teeth when we’re reading a book that cries out for a map…and doesn’t have one? But, assisted by a bit of fossicking in archives, maps can also tell stories all by themselves. Maps of Hong Kong tells lots of them. Like the way the small island everyone these days knows as Ap Lei Pai came to have that name…and how it’s the wrong one. Or how a reservoir for a flour mill came to be called Little Hawaii. Or that Round Island (Ngan Chau) off Repulse Bay got be charted as Ma Kong for 80 years and longer. Or why Tai Mo Shan was once called Lantau Falso. Or that Violet Hill on Hong Kong Island nearly became Mount Hamilton. And, of course, that Hong Kong Island wasn’t called that at all.