Chinese character 珲

珲 means “fine jade” as a word; names work differently.

The History of Jin, a Chinese dynastic history, records the river name 浑蠢水; later records use forms including 珲春. These spellings render a local Jurchen name; Jurchen is an earlier stage of the language later called Manchu. Local accounts gloss the name as “frontier” or “near the border,” though its exact etymology is disputed. So 珲春 is not a literal phrase of 珲 (“fine jade”) plus 春 (“spring”).

The city also has the Korean name 훈춘, written in Hangul, Korea’s writing system. It represents the same place name rather than a Korean reading of the Chinese characters.