Professor Li Tie from our school has published a research paper titled “From Regional Ethnic Group to Nation-State: The Origin and Evolution of Bhutan’s National Name” in the 2026 issue (No. 6) of World History, a top journal in the field. This paper is a phased research outcome of the General Project of the National Social Science Fund of China, “Research on Contemporary Bhutan’s National Governance and Modernization Path,” led by Professor Li Tie. This publication marks a significant breakthrough in interdisciplinary area studies within the School of Foreign Languages, highlighting the School’s academic strength and development potential in serving national strategic needs and conducting in-depth research on specific regions.
Taking Bhutan’s national name as its research object, the paper explores the historical and cultural connotations as well as the political identity value embodied by the name as a cohesive symbol. The evolution of Bhutan’s national name underwent a process from a tribal regional appellation to a dynastic territorial definition, ultimately culminating in the establishment of a modern nation-state name. This process exhibits the dual characteristic of the coexistence of an “endonym” and an “exonym”: internally, it calls itself the “Land of the Thunder Dragon,” while externally, it is commonly known as “Bhutan.” In the early period, the region had multiple appellations such as “Men” and “Lhomon Khashi,” reflecting ethnic migrations and identity integration within the context of religious and cultural exchanges in the Himalayas. The evolution of Bhutan’s national name not only transcends a simple overlay of geography and culture, reflecting key issues in the formation of a unified multi-ethnic state, but also profoundly reveals the Western geographical imagination of Asia since modern times and the legal logic of identity reproduction achieved by modern nation-states through symbolic reconstruction.
World History is a leading journal in the field of world history in China. It is supervised by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and sponsored by the Institute of World History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. First published in 1978, it is the earliest professional journal dedicated to world history in China. It has received the National Excellent Journal Award from the General Administration of Press and Publication of the People’s Republic of China and the Excellent Journal Award from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It is also indexed as a source journal in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI), included in the AMI Comprehensive Evaluation Report of Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences Journals, and recognized as a journal subsidized by the Social Science Fund.
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