The modern constellation Apus is not included in the Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions system of traditional Chinese uranography because its stars are too far south for observers in China to know about them prior to the introduction of Western star charts. Based on the work of Xu Guangqi and the German Jesuit missionary Johann Adam Schall von Bell in the late Ming Dynasty,[1] this constellation has been classified as one of the 23 Southern Asterisms (近南極星區, Jìnnánjíxīngōu) under the name Exotic Bird (異雀, Yìquè).
The name of the western constellation in modern Chinese is 天燕座 (tiān yàn zuò), meaning "the heaven swallow constellation".