When the British first occupied the Hong Kong island, the original intent was to develop three town centers, namely Queen's Town, Stanley Town and Aberdeen Town. This was mainly due to military consideration, as all three were deep sea ports that could host marine battle ships which served as bases for the British marine to launch more attacks on the mainland and were out of reach by the cannons of Tsing troops in Kowloon. Early documents show that British troops were initially stationed in all three locations. As quickly as plans were drawn up, London elites were unwilling to continue financing these increasingly costly operations using their own money, the strategic focus for Hong Kong was then forced to change to sustaining a self financing colony by making it into a free trading port so as to attract investment from wealthy mainland Chinese merchants. As such, the British first focused only on Queen's Town, leaving the other two town centers more or less alone to the locals in the first decade. Lacking resources was the main reason, but large local native populations, particular at Stanley, were other obstacles, let alone Aberdeen port was not big enough to host a whole marine fleet.
Although the idea to develop Aberdeen into a town center was abandoned early on, the name remained in use until today. How did it come about?
The first two English names, Queen's Town and Stanley, have little to do with their respective orginal locales, but the last name, Aberdeen, is special, as it is indeed related to its original corresponding Chinese name. There were no precise historical documents on how the name Aberdeen came about, but circumstancial evidences point to following connections: Ap Lei Chau, Aberdeen in Scotland, and Lord Aberdeen.
Ap Lei Chau is the ancient Chinese name for the islet, which miraculously survived its use until today. Ap and Aberdeen phonetically sounded familiar, so the British gave the islet its English name as "Aberdeen Island", therefore the harbour next to it "Aberdeen Harbour" (or channel), and the district (town center), including Ap Lei Chau, Wong Chuk Hang, Shek Pai Wan, Tin Wan and Wah Fu, "Aberdeen District". In addition, looking northward from Aberdeen Island, the landscape of Shek Pai Wan looked similar to that of Scotland's Aberdeen, both ports had water bodies (rivers vs streams/waterfalls) flanking both sides. In fact, Hong Kong's early commercial success in no small part was attributed to the contributions from Scottish merchants; for example both John Lamont, who built the Aberdeen docks, and Douglas Lapraik, who bought out the docks from Lamont and was once the richest person in Hong Kong in 1870s, were both Scottish. To top it up, Lord Aberdeen was the Foreign Seceretary in charge of all the colonies at the time, including Hong Kong. The first governor of Hong Kong was a well-known brown-noser, who named many places in Kong Kong after the Queen and his other superior nobles. The name "Aberdeen Street" is still in use today, but "Aberdeen Road" and "Aberdeen New Road" had long disappeared.
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