明清时代的水利论所用的“西北”往往指大运河北段地区，有时包括北京。 到了 １９ 世纪后半叶，清朝官僚为了对付回民起义或者伊犁问题，将陕西、甘肃、新疆地区称为“西北”。 “西北”成为中国国内的地区名称是 ２０ 世纪初期的历史现象，从刊于《夏声》的文章里可以看到“吾西北”的说法，其前提是中国国土意识的形成，加以各省的地方认同的成熟。 因此，在本来的方位概念上，加上了区域概念的用法。 １９５４ 年“西北”作为一个大行政区被撤销后，“西北”也经常被作为地区概念使用。

The word “northwest” in the discussions on the water conservancy in the Ming and Qing Dynasties referred to the northern section of the Grand Canal, including Beijing sometimes. In the second half of the 19th century, the bureaucrats in the Qing Dynasty called the regions of Shangxi, Gansu and Xinjiang “northwest” in coping with the rebellions of Muslims and the issue of Yili. The word “northwest” hadn’t become a name of an internal region in China until the early 20th century. The expression of “our northwest” in the articles in the journal of The Voice of the Xia (Xia Sheng) tells us that it was based on the formation of China’s consciousness of national territory and maturity of regional identity in each province that the new meaning as a region, in addition to its original meaning as a direction, appeared. After the revocation of the large “northwest” administrative region in 1954, the word “northwest” remains to refer to a geographical region.