Luhe

Luhe is a toponym used for several geographic places and features, primarily in China, but also appearing in other European contexts under similar spellings. The name is the pinyin transcription of multiple Chinese place names that share the same pronunciation but use different characters and meanings. As a result, Luhe can refer to more than one location, and the exact origin of the name varies with the local history and language.

One widely documented instance is Luhe County (陆河县) in Heyuan City, Guangdong Province, China. This county is an administrative division within the prefecture-level city of Heyuan and is known within regional contexts for its rural landscapes and local economy. Beyond this county, there are other towns and townships in China that use the same pinyin transliteration but employ different characters, and they are not necessarily related to Luhe County in Guangdong.

In non-Chinese contexts, the spelling Luhe may correspond to different names in other languages. For example, similar-sounding forms such as Lühe appear in German geographical naming, where they designate rivers or places in German-speaking regions. These uses are separate from the Chinese toponym, though the shared pronunciation can lead to confusion without additional disambiguation.

Etymology and usage vary by locality. In Chinese, the characters chosen for Luhe can denote diverse concepts, such as land or shore and water features, with no single universal meaning. As a toponym, Luhe illustrates how a single phonetic form can cover multiple, distinct places across regions.