There are many academic theories regarding the ethnic origins of the Dai people. One theory proposes that Dai people migrated southward from the Yellow River region, while another suggests that they are descendants of Gou Jian, who migrated to the southwest from China’s southeastern coast. Chinese scholars uniformly agree that Dai and all of the ethnic minority groups that make up the groups known as Tai-Kadai are descendants of the ancient Yue people, mainly because they are very similar in terms of geographical distribution, lifestyles and customs.
Historians have been attempting to differentiate between the various names that Dai people were called throughout history by referring to Dai people’s geographical distribution and customs. The earliest historical documentation of Dai people is one line in Records of the Grand Historian, Dawan Liezhuan about “Dian Yue” in Yunnan: “No one ruled the Kunming territory, and it was overrun by bandits and robbers who often murdered Han officials. However, it is said that thousands of li to its west, there is a country called Dian Yue, where people rode on elephants.” A few thousand li west of the territory of the Kunming tribe happens to be today’s Yunnan Dehong Dai Tribe and Jingpo Tribe Autonomous Prefecture and its surrounding regions. There, training elephants to work and carry passengers and items is a practice that has been passed down for a long time by Dai people and various other ethnic groups in Southeast Asia. Therefore, historians have come to the conclusion that the Dian Yue people were what eventually became the Dai people that we know of today. During the Tang Dynasty(618-690 AD), Dai people were called Black-Toothed Barbarians, Golden-Toothed Barbarians, Silver-Toothed Barbarians, and Mang Barbarians. The name “White Clothes” (bai yi) was also used to refer to Dai people during the Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty(960-1279 AD). In the Yuan Dynasty(1271-1368 AD), Dai people were called Baiyi or Golden-Toothed Baiyi; by the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644 AD) the term “Jingchi” (Golden-Toothed) was no longer an ethnic group name, but a place name instead. During the Ming Dynasty, the standard name for Dai people before the Wanli period(1573-1620 AD) was “Baiyi” or“Boyi”, and after the Wanli period the names was unified into “Boyi.” However, the word “Boyi” was often confused with “Bo ren” (people). For instance, Li Jing clearly stated in his Simplified Chronicle of Yunnan (Yunnan zhi lue) that the “Bo” and the Golden-Toothed Baiyi were two different ethnic groups, for he thought that “Bo” referred to the Bo ren (people) who used to live in Bodou County and later became known as the Bai (white) people from Yunnan. Generally speaking, in documents dating from the Ming Wanli period through the Qing Dynasty(1644-1911 AD), Dai people are called “Boyi,” and Bai people are called “Bo ren.” Starting from the early Qing Dynasty, people began to call the Dai people Baiyi (second tone) or Baiyi (first tone).
