Pei-ching

At Canton we have Anglicized the native word into something attainable by English tongues, nor do we talk of Ning-poh ; let us not be driven into calling Pekin, Pei-ching, as the latest vocabulary has it, for, even if we did, no Chinaman would understand us.

Source: wiktionary

In the year 1421 (period Yung-lo) the present Peiping, which had at that time the same name, was officially chosen as the capital of the Ming under the name Pei-ching, though they had been engaged on their great building projects there since the year 1409.

Source: wiktionary

Pei-ching, the 'northern capital', has existed since about 2400 B.C., when there was a neolithic settlement on the site. Historically, it was the capital of one of the 'Warring States' in the third and fourth centuries B.C., a provincial town in Han times, lost to the northern invaders during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., recovered by the T'ang, again held by the barbarians in the tenth to twelfth centuries. In 1215 it fell to Genghis Khan and was rebuilt as Ta-tu or T'ai-du, the 'great capital' of Kublai. This had many resemblances to later Peking, but was more regular.

Source: wiktionary

In 1938 the great stream was deflected to the south by the Chinese in a misplaced effort to delay the advance of Japanese forces moving southward from T'ien-ching (Tientsin) and Pei-ching (Peking); and it flowed southeastward into the Huai river system and thence through a series of lakes and the Grand Canal down into the Yangtze drainage area.

Source: wiktionary