The historical local chronicles of Chongqing during the Ming and Qing dynasties as well as the Republic of China period valued both history and geography while also emphasizing humanities. The generic toponym characters best indicate the geographical type to which individual toponym belongs, and accommodates the changes in natural and social characteristics of the southwest region in China. The Grand Dictionary of Chinese Characters is an authoritative large-scale Chinese language dictionary, serving as a bridge between national language norms and the reality of people’s spoken language. It focuses on reflecting the origin, evolution, and actual usage of toponymic characters, but has quite limited absorption and utilization of toponymic materials from local chronicles. In order to investigate the lexicological value of local chronicles, this article uses the historical local chronicles of Chongqing to supplement the pronunciation, explaination, use cases, and inter-character relationships of the generic toponym characters compiled in The Grand Dictionary of Chinese Characters.

When examining the characteristics of ancient local chronicles compilation, it is evident that subsequent chronicles are often compiled on the basis of their predecessors, leading to a phenomenon of imitation. Therefore, a cautious approach should be taken towards the dialectal and colloquial materials recorded within them. Indeed, from the perspective of exploring the evolution of phonetics and vocabulary, the dialectal materials provided by ancient local chronicles do have certain limitations, and researchers need to adopt an attitude of “careful caution, to remove the dross and retain the essence, to verify and correct errors.” However, from the viewpoint of modern Chinese character research, the continuation of later chronicles from earlier ones is not merely simple copying. On the contrary, there are often differences in character usage, and these variant characters actually contain rich linguistic and textual information, which is also valuable for the revision of large-scale linguistic dictionaries. However, there is currently less attention given to the value of variant characters in ancient local chronicles. This paper examines two cases of dialect vocabulary variants in the old chronicles of Zaoyang, Hubei, including the “汆壺廬” from the 1853 edition of the chronicles during the Xianfeng era and the “氼壺盧” from the 1854 edition. Additionally, it discusses the two types of chronicles from the Xianfeng era, “ 黍” and the “萄黍” from the 1923 edition of the chronicles, exploring the reasons for the emergence of these variants and seeking insights from experts in the field.