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Reading about Kaohsiung's history.
It was originally called Takau in the aboriginal language and written as 打狗 by immigrants from mainland China in the 17th century, the Chinese characters meaning "to beat dogs"(Huang Rong??). Then when Japan took over, they kept the pronunciation but wrote it as 高雄, which reads as Takao in Japanese. Then when Taiwan was handed back to the Republic of China, the characters 高雄 were kept but instead read in Mandarin, Gao Xiong in pinyin, or Kaohsiung in Wade-Giles romanization.