【Title】  On the Etymology of Ganlan(干栏)

【Author】 Lan Qingyuan;

【Abstract】 Ganlans(wood or bamboo storied houses),primitive housing once prevailing in ancient China in the Yangtse River Valley and areas south to it,are mainly distributed as residence in Southwestern China today.This paper proposes that ganlan has been a Chinese transcription of the word denoting residential houses in the proto-Zhuang-Dong(proto-Kam-Tai) language before the split of this proto-language,and the Zhuang-Dong(Kam-Tai) word ganlan is cognate with the Chinese word lan(阑).