From Cards To Tiles

This section deals with the transition from Chinese playing cards to the tile set of ma que or ma qiao (its predominant pre-1949 pronunciation), or Mahjong(g) as it became known to the West in the early 1920’s.

The article below is really the sixth article in a series of articles dealing with the early historical development of ma que/Mahjong(g). The previous five articles appear in the preceding section Tile Set History.

Chinese characters(sinograms) appear throughout the text where relevant. In addition to the Chinese playing cards featured in this article, there are also many other examples in the section Money-suited Cards.

From Cards to Tiles: The Origin of Mahjong(g)’s Earliest Suit Names.