Elihu Doty

Elihu Doty
Missionary and linguist
Born	(1809-09-20)September 20, 1809 Berne, New York, US
Died	November 20, 1864(1864-11-20) (aged 55) at sea, en route to New York
Resting place	Parsippany, New Jersey
Residence	Xiamen, China
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Rutgers College New Brunswick Theological Seminary
Occupation	Missionary
Years active	1836–1864
Known for	Anglo Chinese Manual of the Amoy Dialect
Spouse(s)	Clarissa D. Ackley Eleanor Augusta Smith Doty

Elihu Doty (20 September 1809 – 30 November 1864) was an American missionary to China. He was responsible for the first textbook of Southern Min in English. Along with John Van Nest Talmage he is credited with the invention of Peh-oe-ji, the most common orthography used to write Southern Min, although some doubt remains as to the exact origins of this system.

Doty arrived in Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies in 1836 and spent his first three years as a missionary there. His next station was Borneo, from 1839 to 1844, at which point he relocated to Amoy (now Xiamen) in Fujian, China.

It was while stationed in Amoy that Doty produced the Anglo Chinese Manual of the Amoy Dialect (1853), which was "the earliest existing textbook for a Southern Min dialect".