How do you say Japan in Japanese? Nihon or Nippon?

Have you ever wondered why the country is called Nihon and Nippon in Japan? Or why Westerners call the country Japan? Where did these terms come from? Are there other ways to refer to the land of the rising sun?

In this article, we will look at why Japan has several names like Nihon and Nippon. We will see how these names originated, some curiosities, and how to say Japan in various languages.

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How do you say Japan in Japanese?

Japan in Japanese is nihon or nippon [日本], both written the same way. Throughout the article, you will understand a little better the meaning and origin of this name.

If you want to use the Western name in Japanese, the usual form is ジャパン (japan). Japanese passports print the country's name in Latin letters as JAPAN, next to the kanji 日本国. The older spelling ジャポン (japon), with an o, comes from French and Portuguese and appears less often today.

There are other ways to transcribe Japan from different languages into Japanese using katakana. French Japon and Portuguese Japão became ジャポン, while Spanish Japón became ハポン. These forms are little known in Japan; ジャパン is the one people recognize.

Meaning and origin of the name Japan

Japan is written [日本] in Japanese, where [日] means sun and [本] means origin. For this reason, Japan is known as the land of the rising sun and has a simple flag that represents the sun. The kanji have various readings, allowing the pronunciations nihon and nippon for the country's name [日本].

The two Japanese syllabaries are called hiragana and katakana, and each character represents a sound. Using them, we can write nihon [日本] as follows: [にほん] or [ニホン]. Now notice the small difference in the word nippon written in hiragana and katakana: [にっぽん] [ニッポン].

The hiragana or katakana letters used are practically the same. The difference is that nippon uses the handakuten to transform an h into a p and a small tsu [っ] that doubles the p sound. Apart from these phonetic details, the kanji [日本] have no other common reading in modern Japanese.

Why is Japan the land of the rising sun? This is because, according to the Chinese, the country is located to the east of China, where the sun rises. The sun goddess Amaterasu, from whom the imperial line traditionally claims descent, reinforces the image. We can also notice this in the time zone: Japan Standard Time is UTC+9, 12 hours ahead of Brasília and 13 or 14 hours ahead of New York, depending on daylight saving.

What is the ancient name of Japan?

Early Chinese chronicles called Japan wa [倭], which became wakoku [倭国] in Japanese. How the name was pronounced at the time is uncertain.

The character [倭] carried an offensive connotation, so Japanese scribes replaced it with the homophone [和], which means harmony. The older name Yamato [大和] referred to the region around Nara, where the early imperial court was established.

For the West, the name took a different route through China and Southeast Asia.

Why does the West call it Japan?

The Western name has a separate history. Marco Polo, who never visited Japan, described the country as Cipangu, probably based on a southern Chinese pronunciation of 日本國. His account made the name known in Europe.

In Mandarin, the characters for Nihon or Nippon [日本] are pronounced Rìběn today. The European forms came through Malay: Portuguese traders in Malacca heard Jepang or Jipang and carried the word to Europe. English first recorded it as Giapan in 1577. From there came Italian Giappone, French Japon, Portuguese Japão and English Japan. In Japanese, the name can be written in katakana as [ジャパン].

Portuguese missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries recorded older forms such as Nifon and Jippon in their grammars and dictionaries. They show that the h in today's nihon was still heard as f, and that 日 could begin with a j sound. Modern Japanese uses Nihon and Nippon, while those spellings survive mainly in historical texts.

When to use Nihon and Nippon?

The first pronunciation used for the ideograms [日本] was Nippon. The name appears in written sources at the end of the 7th century. Nihon is thought to have emerged in the Edo period in the Kantō region. The split is still visible in two places called 日本橋: Tokyo's bridge is Nihonbashi, while Osaka's shopping district is Nipponbashi, near the former capital of Kyoto.

People have long discussed which reading should be official. A proposal from 1934 tried to settle the question: NHK decided to use Nippon as its first reading on air, and a committee of the Ministry of Education suggested standardizing Nippon and replacing Japan in foreign languages. The plan was never completed.

Nihon is more common in everyday speech, while Nippon is preferred in formal names, on banknotes and stamps, and at international events. In 2009, the Japanese government replied in a cabinet answer that both readings are widely used and that there is no need to standardize one. Notice also that the language is called nihongo [日本語]; nippongo is rare.

Other ways to refer to Japan

The country's name is written with two kanji, but Japanese has used several other names for it over the centuries. Was it always this way, and are there alternatives to Nihon and Nippon?

Before Nihon and Nippon [日本], the land of the rising sun was called Wa [倭] or Wakoku [倭国]. In Japan, Yamato [大和] was the name of the region around the early capital at Nara, from which the imperial court emerged. The relationship between Yamato and the Wa country described in Chinese texts, sometimes called Yamatai, is still debated.

Over the years, the ideogram [倭] was replaced by [和], which means harmony and peace. It is still widely used in words related to Japan, such as traditional Japanese food washoku [和食].

Throughout its history, Japan has also received other names and poetic epithets:

• Ōyashima [大八洲] great country of eight, or many, islands;
• Yashima [八島] eight, or many, islands;
• Hinomoto [日の本] origin of the sun;
• Akitsukuni [秋津国] poetic name often read as land of the dragonfly;
• Shikishima [敷島] spread-out islands, originally a district name in Yamato;
• Mizuho [瑞穂] land of lush rice ears;
• Fusō [扶桑] mythical tree and poetic name for the land to the east.

How do you say Japan in other languages?

To conclude the article, the list below shows how the land of the rising sun is called in various languages. Many of the forms go back to the same Chinese or Malay root, even when they look very different today.

Languages	Name of Japan
Amharic	ጃፓን (japani)
Arabic	اليابان (al-yābān)
Armenian	ճապոնիա (Chaponia)
Azerbaijani	Yaponiya
Bangla	জাপান (Jāpān)
Basque	Japonia
Belarusian	Японія (Japonija)
Catalan	Japó
Croatian	Japan
Czech	Japonsko
Dutch	Japan
English	Japan
Filipino	Hapón (Japón)
Finnish	Japani
French	Japon
Galician	O Xapón
Georgian	იაპონია (iaponia)
German	Japan
Greek	Ιαπωνία (Iaponía)
Hawaiian	Iapana
Hebrew	יפן (Yapan)
Hindi	जापान (jāpān)
Hungarian	Japán
Icelandic	Japan
Indonesian	Jepang
Irish	An tSeapáin
Italian	Giappone
Kazakh	Жапония (Japoniya)
Khmer	ជប៉ុន (japon)
Kurdish	Japonya
Malay	جڤون‎ (Jepun)
Maltese	Ġappun
Mongolian	Япон
Persian	ژاپن (žāpon)
Polish	Japonia
Romanian	Japonia
Russian	Япония (Yaponiya)
Scottish Gaelic	Iapan
Sinhala	ජපානය (Japanaya)
Slovak	Japonsko
Spanish	Japón
Swedish	Japan
Tamil	ஜப்பான் (Jappaan)
Thai	ญี่ปุ่น (yīpun)
Turkish	Japonya
Ukrainian	Японія (Yaponiya)
Urdu	جاپان (jāpān)
Welsh	Siapan
Xhosa	Japhan

Choosing between Nihon and Nippon is a matter of context. Nippon sounds more formal and appears in official names, while Nihon is the everyday reading. Either way, the country's own name comes from the same two characters: sun and origin.