The word "keno" has French or Latin roots (Fr. quine five winning
numbers, L. quini five each), but by all accounts the game originated in
China. A spurious legend has it that the invention of the game saved an
ancient city in time of war, and its widespread popularity helped raise
funds to build the Great Wall. But this is all impossible since the idea
of using lotteries to fund a public institution has not become accepted
in China before the late 19th century. The Chinese lottery baige piao
(白鸽票) is not documented before 1847 when the Portuguese Government of
Macao decided to grant a licence to lottery operators. (By the way the
Portuguese then called this "white pigeon" lottery simple 'a lotaria
chinesa' ("the Chinese lottery"). According to some, results of keno
games in great cities were sent to outlying villages and hamlets by
carrier pigeon, resulting in its Chinese name baige piao (白鸽票) or
"white pigeon tickets", pronounced pak-kop-piu in Cantonese.
The Chinese played the game using sheets printed with Chinese characters, often the first 80 characters of the Thousand Character Classic, from which the winning characters were selected.[1][2] Eventually, Chinese immigrants introduced keno to the West when they sailed across the Pacific to help build the American trans-continental railroad in the 19th century[3], where the name was Westernized into boc hop bu[2] and puck-apu[1].
References
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