Kaohsiung, officially Kaohsiung City, is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of 2,952 km² (1,140 sq mi). Kaohsiung City has a population of approximately 2.72 million people and is Taiwan's third most populous city and the largest city in southern Taiwan.

Founded in the 17th century as a small trading village named Tancoia, a name of uncertain origins, the city has since grown into the economic center of southern Taiwan, with key industries such as manufacturing, steel-making, oil refining, freight transport and shipbuilding. It is classified as a "Sufficiency" level global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, with some of the most prominent infrastructures in Taiwan.

Kaohsiung is of strategic importance to the nation as the city is the main port city of Taiwan; the Port of Kaohsiung is the largest and busiest harbor in Taiwan and more than 67% of the nation's exports and imports container throughput goes through Kaohsiung. Kaohsiung International Airport is the second busiest airport in number of passengers in Taiwan. The city is well-connected to other major cities by high speed and conventional rail, as well as several national freeways. It also hosts the Republic of China Navy (ROCN) fleet headquarters and its naval academy. More recent public works such as Pier-2 Art Center, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts and Kaohsiung Music Center have been aimed at growing the tourism and cultural industries of the city.

Hoklo immigrants to the area during the 16th and 17th centuries called the region Takau (Chinese: 打狗; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Táⁿ-káu). The surface meaning of the associated Chinese characters was "beat the dog". According to one theory, the name "Takau" originates from the indigenous Austronesian Siraya language and translates as "bamboo forest". According to another theory, the name evolved via metathesis from the name of the Makatao tribe, who inhabited the area at the time of European and Hoklo settlement. The Makatao is considered by some to be part of the Siraya tribe.

During the Dutch colonization of southern Taiwan, the area was known as Tancoia to Europeans for a period of about three decades.^[specify] In 1662, the Dutch were expelled by the Kingdom of Tungning, founded by Ming loyalists of Koxinga. His son, Zheng Jing, renamed the village Banlian-chiu (Chinese: 萬年州; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bān-liân-chiu; lit. 'ten-thousand-year state (zhou)') in 1664.

The name of "Takau" was restored in the late 1670s, when the town expanded drastically with immigrants from mainland China and was kept through Taiwan's cession to the Japanese Empire in 1895. In his 1903 general history of Taiwan, US Consul to Formosa James W. Davidson relates that "Takow" was already a well-known name in English. In 1920, the name was changed to Takao (Japanese: 高雄; after Takao (Kyoto) [ja], a place in Ukyō Ward, Kyoto) and administered the area under Takao Prefecture. While the new name had quite a different surface meaning, its pronunciation in Japanese sounded more or less the same as the old name spoken in Hokkien.

After Taiwan was ceded to the Republic of China, the Chinese characters did not change, but adapted to Mandarin pronunciation, thus the official romanization became Kaohsiung (pinyin: Gāoxióng; Wade–Giles: Kao¹-hsiung²), derived from the Wade–Giles romanization of the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation for 高雄.

The name Takau remains the official name of the city in Austronesian languages of Taiwan such as Rukai, although these are not widely spoken in the city. The name also remains popular locally in the naming of businesses, associations, and events.