cultural identity. Etymology The term "" (Yue) () in Early Middle Chinese was first written using the logograph "戉" for an axe (a homophone), in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty ( BC), and later as "越". At the time it referred to a people or chieftain to the northwest of the Shang. In the early 8th century BC, a tribe on the middle Yangtze was called the Yangyue, a term later used for peoples further south. Between the 7th and 4th centuries BC Yue/Việt referred to the state of Yue in the lower Yangtze basin and its people. From the 3rd century BC the term was used for the non-Han Chinese populations of south and southwest China and northern Vietnam, with particular ethnic groups called Minyue, Ouyue, Luoyue (Vietnamese: Lạc Việt), etc., collectively called the Baiyue (Bách Việt, ; ). The term Baiyue/Bách Việt first appeared in the book Lüshi Chunqiu compiled around 239 BC. According to Ye Wenxian (1990), apud Wan (2013), the ethnonym of the Yuefang in northwestern China is not associated with that of the Baiyue in southeastern China. At first, Yue referred to all peoples of the south that practiced un-Chinese slash-and-burn cultivation and lived in stilt houses, but this definition does not suggest that all Yue were the same and spoke the same language. They were loosely-connected or independent tribal societies belonging to a diverse ethnolinguistic complex. As Chinese imperial power expanded toward the south, Chinese sources generalized the tribes of Northern Vietnam at the time as Yue, or the Luoyue and the Ouyue (Lạc Việt and Au Viet in Vietnamese). Over time, the term Yue morphed and became a geopolitical designation rather than a term for a group of people, and became more of a historical and political term rather than tied to connotations of barbarism. During the period of Chinese rule, many states and rebellions in the former region of Yue (Southern China and Northern Vietnam) used the name Yue as an old geopolitical name rather than as an ethnonym. When the word Yue (Middle Chinese: ɦʉɐt̚) was borrowed into Vietnamese language during the late Tang dynasty (618–907) by the Austroasiatic Viet-Muong speaking peoples who were the ancestors of modern-day Vietnamese Kinh, the exonym was gradually localized to become an endonym of the Vietnamese. That endonym might have been manifested in different forms depending on how neighboring peoples