Beijing - Wikipedia The English spelling Beijing is based on the government's official romanization (adopted in the 1980s) of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin An older English spelling, Peking, was used by Jesuit missionary Martino Martini in a popular atlas published in Amsterdam in 1655 [37]
What is the difference between Peking and Beijing? Peking and Beijing refer to the same city, with Beijing being the modern and official name Peking is the older, romanized version of the name that was used in the past