Abstract: The Bureau of Terminology was an institution of the Ministry of Education to unify the terms of all subjects in the late Qing Dynasty. In the aspect of mathematical terms, the Bureau certified about 1000 terms that covered arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, spherical trigonometry and analytic geometry, and compiled these terms into The Chinese-English Term List for Mathematics. The activity of the Bureau created a precedent in unification of mathematical terms by official in China, which took the following principles: selectively using old translated names; usually using elegance ancient characters to translate new names; almost not directly using Japanese translations. Because of the influx and popular of Japanese translations, the vernacular's popularity and its impact on classical Chinese, and some other reasons, a lot of terms translated based on elegance ancient characters have been eliminated later. However, most terms using old translations are retained till now and played a positive role in the dissemination of mathematics in China.

Key words: the Ministry of Education, the Bureau of Terminology, The Chinese-English Term List for Mathematics, unification of terms