[oska]

The history of, and explanations for, the varieties of names for Beijing ('northern capital') is so complex and detailed that it gets its own wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Beijing

See also [1]: Bosat Man, Backhill/Peking/Beijing (1990), which is not currently included as a reference in the above wikipedia article.

[1] http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp019_peking_beijing....