There are many
names of Japan in the
English,
Japanese, and other languages. The word "Japan" (or "Japon") is an
exonym, and is used (in one form or another) by a large number of languages. The
Japanese names for
Japan are
Nippon (にっぽん ) and
Nihon (にほん ). They are both written in Japanese using the
kanji 日本. The Japanese name
Nippon is used for most official purposes, including on
Japanese money,
postage stamps, and for many international
sporting events.
Nihon is a more casual term and the most frequently used in contemporary speech.
History
Cipangu on the 1453
Fra Mauro map, the first known Western depiction of the island.
Both
Nippon and
Nihon literally mean "the sun's origin", that is, where the sun originates, and are often translated as the
Land of the Rising Sun. This nomenclature comes from
Imperial correspondence with
Chinese Sui Dynasty and refers to Japan's eastward position relative to
China. Before Japan had relations with China, it was known as
Hi no moto, which means "source of the sun" and
Yamato.
Wa (倭) was a name early China used to refer to an ethnic group living in Japan around the time of the
Three Kingdoms Period. Because the
character originally used to transcribe the ethnonym
Wa (i.e. (倭) means "dwarf" in Chinese, a different character, 和, which means "harmony", came to be used in Japan instead of 倭. Retroactively, this character was adopted in Japan to refer to the country itself, often combined with the character 大, literally meaning "Great", not unlike many nations, to write the preexisting name
Yamato (大和) (e.g., such as 大清帝國 Great
Qing Empire, 大英帝國 Great British Empire). However, the pronunciation
Yamato cannot be formed from the sounds of its constituent characters, it refers to a place in Japan and is speculated to originally mean "Mountain Gate" (山戸). Other original names in Chinese texts include
Yamatai nation (邪馬台国), where a
Queen Himiko lived. When
hi no moto was written in
kanji, it was given the characters 日本. In time, these characters began to be read using
pseudo-Chinese readings, first
Nippon and later
Nihon.
Nippon appeared in history only at the end of the 7th century.
Old Book of Tang (舊唐書), one of the
Twenty-Four Histories, stated that the Japanese envoy disliked his country's name
Woguo (倭國), and changed it to
Nippon (日本), or "Origin of the Sun". Another 8th-century chronicle,
True Meaning of Shiji (史記正義), however, states that the Chinese Empress
Wu Zetian ordered a Japanese envoy to change the country's name to
Nippon.
The English word for Japan came to the West from early trade routes. The early
Mandarin Chinese or possibly
Wu Chinese word for Japan was recorded by
Marco Polo as
Cipangu. The modern
Shanghainese (a
Wu Chinese dialect 呉語) pronunciation of characters 日本 (Japan) is still
Zeppen . The old
Malay word for Japan,
Jepang (modern spelling
Jepun, although
Indonesian has retained the older spelling), was borrowed from a Chinese language, and this Malay word was encountered by
Portuguese traders in
Malacca in the 16th century. It is thought the Portuguese traders were the first to bring the word to
Europe. It was first recorded in English in 1577 spelled
Giapan.
In English, the official title of the country is simply "Japan", one of the few nation-states to have no "long form" name. From the
Meiji Restoration until the end of
World War II, the full title of Japan was the "
Great Empire of Japan" (大日本帝國
Dai Nippon Teikoku or Great Empire of Japan). More poetically, another name for the empire was "Empire of the Sun". The official name of nation was changed after the adoption of the post-war constitution; the title "State of Japan" is sometimes used as a colloquial modern-day equivalent. The official Japanese title is
Nippon koku or
Nihon koku (日本国), literally "
Country of Japan".
Though
Nippon or
Nihon are still by far the most popular names for Japan from within the country, recently the foreign words
Japan and even
Jipangu (from
Cipangu, see below) have been used in Japanese mostly for the purpose of
foreign branding.
Historical
Portuguese missionaries arrived in Japan at the end of the 16th century. In the course of learning
Japanese, they created several grammars and dictionaries of
Middle Japanese. The 1603-1604 dictionary
Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam contains two entries for Japan:
nifon and
iippon.
The title of the dictionary (
Vocabulary of the Language of Japan) illustrates that the
Portuguese word for Japan was by that time
Iapam.
Nifon
Historically, Japanese /h/ has undergone a number of phonological changes. Originally *
[p], this weakened into
and eventually became the modern . Note that modern is still pronounced when followed by .
Middle Japanese
nifon becomes Modern Japanese
nihon via regular phonological changes.
Jippon
Prior to modern styles of
romanization, the Portuguese devised their
own. In it, /zi/ is written as either
ii or
ji. In modern
Hepburn style,
iippon would be rendered as
jippon. There are no historical phonological changes to take into account here.
Etymologically,
jippon is similar to
nippon in that it is an alternative reading of 日本. The initial kanji 日 may also be read as /ziti/ or /zitu/. Compounded with -fon (本), this regularly becomes
jippon.
Unlike the
nihon/
nippon doublet, there is no evidence for a *
jihon.
Nihon and Nippon
The
Japanese name for Japan, 日本, can be pronounced either
Nihon or
Nippon. Both readings come from the
on'yomi.
日 (
nichi) means "sun" or "day"; 本 (
hon) means "base" or "root". The compound means "base of the sun" or "sunrise" (from a
Chinese point of view, the sun rises from Japan); it is of course a source for the popular Western description of Japan as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Nichi, in compounds, often loses the final
chi and creates a slight pause between the first and second syllables of the compound. When romanised, this pause is represented by a doubling of the first consonant of the second syllable; thus
nichi 日 plus
kō 光 (light) is written and pronounced
nikkō, meaning sunlight.
Hon in compounds also often changes to
bon or
pon; h, b and p are closely related sounds in Japanese. There are therefore two possible pronunciations for 日本: Nihon or Nippon. While both pronunciations are correct,
Nippon is frequently preferred for official purposes, including
money,
stamps, and international
sporting events, as well as the
Nippon koku, literally the "
State of Japan" (日本国).
Other than this, there seem to be no fixed rules for choosing one pronunciation over the other; in some cases one form is simply more common. For example, Japanese people generally call their language
Nihongo;
Nippongo, while possible,
is rare. In other cases, uses are variable. The name for the Bank of Japan (日本銀行), for example, is given as
NIPPON GINKO on banknotes, but often referred to (in the media, for example) as
Nihon Ginkō.
Nippon is used always or most often in the following constructions:
- Ganbare Nippon! (A sporting cheer used at international sporting events, roughly, 'do your best, Japan!')
Nihon is used always or most often in the following constructions:
- Nihon-bashi (日本橋) (Bridge of Japan, a bridge with same name but different reading in Tokyo and the surrounding oldest and largest commercial districts of the city)
Jipangu
As mentioned above, the
English word "Japan" has a circuitous derivation; but
linguists believe it derives in part from the
Portuguese recording of the early
Mandarin Chinese or
Wu Chinese word for Japan:
Cipan (日本), which is rendered in
pinyin as
Rìběn, and literally translates to "country of sun origin".
Guó is Chinese for "realm" or "kingdom", so it could alternatively be rendered as "Japan-
guó".
Cipangu was first mentioned in Europe in the accounts of the travels of
Marco Polo. It appears for the first time on a European map with the
Fra Mauro map in 1457, although it appears much earlier on Chinese and Korean maps such as the
Kangnido. Following the accounts of Marco Polo, Cipangu was thought to be fabulously rich in silver and gold, which in Medieval times was largely correct, owing to the volcanism of the islands and the possibility to access precious ores without resorting to (unavailable) deep-mining technologies.
The modern
Shanghainese pronunciation of Japan is
Zeppen . In modern Japanese,
Cipangu is transliterated as ジパング which in turn can be transliterated into English as
Jipangu,
Zipangu,
Jipang, or
Zipang.
Jipangu (ジパング) as an
obfuscated name for Japan has recently come into vogue for Japanese
films,
anime,
video games, etc.
Other names
Classical flowery names
These flowery names are used to designate ancient Japan. These names were invented after the introduction of Chinese into the language, and they show up in historical texts for prehistoric legendary dates and also in names of gods and emperors:
- Ōyashima (大八洲) meaning the Great country of eight (or many) islands, Awaji, Iyo (later Shikoku), Oki, Tsukushi (later Kyūshū), Iki, Tsushima, Sado, and Yamato (later Honshū); note that Hokkaidō, Chishima, and Okinawa were not part of Japan in ancient times. The eight islands refers to the creation of the main eight islands of Japan by the gods Izanami and Izanagi in Japanese mythology as well as the fact that eight was a synonym for "many".
- Mizuho (瑞穂) refers to strand of rice.
- Akitsushima (秋津島） or Toyo-akitsushima (豊秋津島）, Toyo means "Abundant". Akitsu means "Dragonfly". So "Akitsushima" means "The Island of Dragonflies".
The
katakana transcription ジャパン of the English word
Japan is sometimes encountered in Japanese, for example in the names of organizations seeking to project an international image.
Other East Asian nations
Dōngyáng (東洋) and
Dōngyíng (東瀛) – both literally, "Eastern Ocean" – are
Chinese terms sometimes used to refer to Japan exotically when contrasting it with other countries or regions in eastern
Eurasia; however, these same terms may also be used to refer to all of
East Asia when contrasting "the East" with "the West". They have been considered to be pejorative terms when used to mean "Japan". They can be contrasted with
Nányáng (Southern Ocean), which refers to
Southeast Asia, and
Xīyáng (Western Ocean), which refers to the
Western world. In
Japanese and
Korean, the Chinese word for "Eastern Ocean" (pronounced as
tōyō in Japanese and as
dongyang (동양) in Korean) is used only to refer to
the Orient (including both East Asia and Southeast Asia) in general, and it is not used in the more specific Chinese sense of "Japan".
In
China,
Japan is called
Rìběn, which is the
Mandarin pronunciation for the
hanzi 日本. The
Cantonese pronunciation is
Yatboon , the
Shanghainese (Wu Chinese) pronunciation is
Zeppen , and the
Min Nan (Hokkien) pronunciation is
. This has influenced the Thai name for Japan,
Yipun (ญี่ปุ่น). The Chinese also have a racist name for Japan,
Xiǎo Rìběn (小日本), which means "little Japan", in reference to dwarfism, and antithetical to "Great" or "Big" (大) in
Yamato (大和). In Korean, Japan is called
Ilbon (일본/日本), which is the Korean pronunciation of the
Sino-Korean name, and in
Sino-Vietnamese, Japan is called
Nhật Bản (also rendered as Nhựt Bổn).
Ue-kok (倭國) is recorded for older
Hokkien speakers. In the past, Korea also used 倭國, pronounced
Waeguk (왜국).
