Names of Japan

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The English word Japan is not the name used for their country by the Japanese while speaking the Japanese language: it is an exonym. The Japanese names for Japan are Nippon (にっぽん) and Nihon (にほん). They are both written in Japanese using the Chinese characters 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.

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[edit] History

Cipangu on the 1453 Fra Mauro map, the first known Western depiction of the island.
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 Yamato and Hi no moto, which means "source of the sun".[1] 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) acquired pejorative connotations, a different character, 和, which has more positive connotations, 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", to give the name Yamato (大和). 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.

Cipangu described on the 1492 Martin Behaim globe.
Cipangu described on the 1492 Martin Behaim globe.

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 [zəʔpən]. 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 countries 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). 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Nifon

Historically, Japanese /h/ has undergone a number of phonological changes. Originally *[p], this weakened into [ɸ] and eventually became the modern [h]. Note that modern /h/ still retains [ɸ] when followed by /u/.

Middle Japanese nifon becomes Modern Japanese nihon via regular phonological changes.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 [2] , 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:

Nihon is used always or most often in the following constructions:

[edit] 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: Cipangu (日本国), which is rendered in pinyin as Rìběnguó, 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 [zəʔpən]. 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.

[edit] Other names

Another old name for Japan is Ōyashima (大八洲) meaning the country of eight 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. Also Yashima (八島), Fusō (扶桑), Mizuho (瑞穂), Shikishima (敷島) and Akitsushima (秋津島）are the names to designate ancient Japan.

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.

[edit] Other East Asian nations

Dongyang (東洋) and Dongying (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 Nanyang (Southern Ocean), which refers to Southeast Asia, and Xiyang (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 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 Riben, which is the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation for the hanzi/kanji 日本. The Cantonese pronunciation is Yahtbun [jatpun], the Shanghainese (Wu Chinese) pronunciation is Zeppen [zəʔpən], and the Min Nan (Hokkien) pronunciation is Ji̍t-pún. 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 seen as Nhật Bổn).

Ue-kok (倭國) is recorded for older Hokkien speakers. [3] In the past, Korea also used 倭國, pronounced Waeguk (왜국).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Teach Yourself Japanese Message Board
  2. ^ Nihon Kokugo Daijiten Henshū Iin Kai, Shōgakukan Kokugo Daijiten Henshūbu (2000/12-2002/12). Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (2nd edition). Shōgakukan. 
  3. ^ www.chineselanguage.org message board

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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