地名是人與地方互動的產物，因此考證地名的源流和意義，可以為我們重建先民在這片土地生活的歷史，並且揭露一個族群在更大脈絡下的活動經驗。本文透過考證「土庫」的地名歷史和原始意義，一方面爬梳原始文獻，為地名考證的過程提供堅實基礎，同時也將討論範圍擴展到散布於東亞世界中的「土庫」，嘗試從更廣的視角探求難解地名的原意，以及先民在東亞世界活動經驗的普遍性。根據土地契約和地圖等文獻史料，「土庫」這個地名在台灣本島的分布北自台北，南到高雄，沒有明顯的地域性，可以推斷它是一個源自普遍生活經驗的地名。惟這個地名的原始意義已經不在現代人的生活經驗中，使我們必須從更多的歷史文獻著手。本文考證相關語言史料，發現土庫正如它字面上的意義，為土造防火倉庫，在14世紀就已經出現在中國的文獻上。後來隨著閩南海商網絡在東亞海域的擴張，在日本、暹羅、印尼爪哇都有被稱為「土庫」的建築物，並在臺灣成為廣泛分布的地名。「土庫」一詞的語義也在17、18世紀擴張，從原本的防火倉庫，增加商業據點的意義，並進入馬來語，成為東南亞的文化成分。但在台灣和閩南，用來稱呼防火倉庫的「土庫」被「火庫」取代，以致現代人無法理解「土庫」的意義，從而導出各種不同的俗民字源。透過考證「土庫」的地名源流，我們可以瞭解「土庫」在早期台灣農業社會的功能，重建這個地名一度失去的意義，同時也以「土庫」為線索，將在地的地名與漢人在東亞世界的活動經驗連結，展現地名作為一個研究方法的潛力。

Placenames are products from the interaction of human and places, so the etymological study of placename can reveal the historical activities of the people on land. This study investigates the etymology of ”Toko” to uncover its history and to reconstruct the historical relationships of this local placename in a greater context. This study finds Toko is a placename from a fire-proof warehouse, which had been documented since the fourteenth century. Sailors in the next century were aware of it and described similar constructions in Java with this name. By the late sixteenth century, Hokkien maritime merchants use this term to call European trade factories in the Southeast Asia as well as the Chinese ghetto in Nagasaki, Japan. This early modern expansion also brought this term to Taiwan and became many placenames in this newly established Hokkien community. However, ”toko” underwent semantic change in the nineteenth century. In the Southeast Asia, its trade factory sense was borrowed by Malay and became a Chinese element in the Southeast Asian culture. In Taiwan and China, however, people innovated another name for the thing used to be called ”toko” in the last century. The semantic changes break the surface relationship associated by this placename and require a critical investigation, such as this paper, to recover the historical underlying relation.