Henan people call the horseshoe Di Pi Zi, Di Pi Er.

Horseshoe is the common name for water chestnut. In Suzhou, water chestnuts are included in the Water Eight Immortals; while in the areas of Ningbo, Jiaxing and Shanghai in Zhejiang Province, water chestnuts are also called Di Li (pear).

In Henan or Anhui part of the region is also similarly called the ground pear (children); Hubei region on the "water chestnut" title is similar, mostly called "Pu Capsicum", pronunciation on the slightly different.

In Sichuan, people generally call water chestnuts as the mushroom ('er')，although the academic "'er'"is another kind of white plant and water chestnuts are somewhat similar in shape, but completely different, but the Sichuan people are generally called 'er'(茨菇儿),white 'er'(er').

The origin of the name water chestnut:

Horseshoe is the common name for water chestnut. The formal name of water chestnut. The reason why water chestnut is called horseshoe, that is because the shape and appearance of water chestnut itself is very similar to the horseshoe, hence the name. Many places are accustomed to call water chestnuts as horseshoes, especially in Guangdong and other places, said buy water chestnuts may be a lot of people do not know what it is, but to talk about the horseshoe there are a lot of people know it.

Originally, the linguistic scholars and historians pointed out that, probably because of the ancient times, a minority will be water chestnut plant with the national dialect pronounced "horseshoe", meaning "underground fruit".