Why Is Nihon Called Japan In English? 

Japan is still closer to Nihon than Germany is to Deutschland ;)

So, where does "Nippon" come from? :S

Chinese Ribenguo literally translates to "Sun Origin Country", so Japan is indeed the land of the rising sun. This name was adopted by the Japanese themselves as Nihonkoku/Nipponkoku. People eventually dropped the guo/koku part though, which is why Japan today is simple called Nihon in Japanese, and Riben in Chinese, which is why google translate told you that Ribenguo means "country of Japan".

My home country Suomi is known as Finland everywhere else :P

Great video, some one else said it but you really should do Germany. It is possibly the most ridiculous country for peoples not agreeing on its name. In German its Deutschland, in hungarian its Németország, in french its Allemagne and as poland ball has shown us in polish it is Niemcy. Really ridiculous and really interesting! Keep up the good work!

0:55 'rye ben goo oh' seriously?

I've always found it fascinating that even in Japanese, there are two names for it, (ie Nihon, and Nippon). But having been there twice, I can definitely say that whatever you call it, Japan, Nihon or Nippon, its a beautiful place indeed. Some of their gardens and natural settings are just breathtaking.

Before you try to pronounce a word like "Riben guo" just click "listen" on google translate and practice a couple of times.

Cipangu sounds much much more like the Chinese name of Japan than your attempt at pronouncing "Riben Guo".

As far as I know the closest pronunciation is from Cantonese/Hongkong which is Yap pun/Jap pun, which influenced British English. and in Taiwanese/Min Nan dialect they called it Jit pun, which influenced how it pronounced in Malaysia and Indonesia (Jepun and Jepang)

Is there anything you can't mispronounce? :P

1:38 "found the tardis!"

Because Kanji pronounciation is different in many regions. 日本 is Nihon or Nippon in Japan. Yappun in Canton/HK. Riben in Mandarin. Zappun in Shanghai. Jippun in Fujian(south-east coast in China) and Taiwan. So I think "Japon" came from Portuguese Sailor in 16 centuries who heard from coastal Chinese.

Do the same on why is Suomi called Finland in English

Indonesian/Malay name for Japan came from Southern Chinese Dialects. Most likely Hokkien. Do know that the character for Japan in Kanji (日本) means "Sun origin". This is due to the location of Japan which is east of China where the sun rises. Kanji are pronounced differently in Chinese dialects. In this case "Japan/Jepang/Jepun" is much closer to Hokkien and Teochew which is pronounced Ji pun(g). Another example is tea. A lot of languages in the world calls it "Tea" or "Cha" or variants of it. Both of which comes from different Chinese dialects.

Must have been us Teochew and Hokkien calling them Jipun that's why its known as Japan

As someone who speaks Mandarin, it clearly comes from Chinese. In Chinese Japan is Riben. It is pronounced something like "rrr-bon" like "ribbon" without the "i" sound. In some Chinese accents it can also be pronounced like "je-bon", where the "je" is like the French word for I (as in Je t'aime)

As far as I know, it was the Portuguese who introduce the name Giapan to Indonesian/Malay natives, those Giapan-> Jepang/Japan, not the other way. For example, Indonesian also use the word "Inggris" from Portuguese word for "English", which is "Inglês". But I have no source for this so take this with a heavy amount of salt.

is there any chance the portuguese brought the word arigato to japan. because that and its equivalent in portuguese are pronounced similarly (obrigado-arigato) and we were some of the very first europeans to trade with them (we gave them their first firearms on interestingly)

I've been learning a bit of Mandarin Chinese and I've been wondering about this too: 1. It's worth noting that the Chinese pronunciation of Rìběn (日本) sounds like je-ban. The characters are the same in Japanese as they are in Chinese. As you noted in your video on why Japan is called Land of the Rising Sun - The first character is the Sun, the second is origin or source. Guó - means kingdom or country. So Rìběn guó 日本国 is Land of the Rising Sun. So you'd think it's just a different language pronouncing the name and we got the name from the Chinese but... 2. The pronunciation in Chinese is a bit weird. Normally the first character, 日 or Rì, is pronounced like the "rou" from "rough" but with a slightly softer 'r' sound. This is how it's pronounced when you're talking about the sun or it being hot but when they talk about Japan it becomes more of a "Je" sound. Some maybe it's the influence of other regional dialects.

riben guo was pronounced incorrectly

I know an other version: The first name for Japan ever recorded, is "Wo, literally the land of dwarfs". Which later became "Wa" in Japanese, the land of peace; and later "Nihon/Nippon", the land of rising sun. Marco Polo has been to Suzhou, where, the Wu-dialect is spoken; And in that dialect, Japan is called Zeppun. Which is closer to the pronounciation Japan.

Glad you kept this short and concise

The blue box reference made me subscribe :P watched a few videos but this made me do it :D

It comes from Hokkien and Teochew (smaller dialects of Chinese) who say riben as jipun (che pen) the e sounds like the e in ren [人] Which means land of the rising sun: the same as japanese kanji for nihon/nippon. Hokkien and Teochew are based in Southern China where most colonists would've landed first for trade and navigation. TLDR: Japan's name comes from a small Chinese dialect's pronunciation of 日本。

日本的國家 = riben de guo jia. That translates in Chinese to "country of Japan." 日本的王國 = riben de wang guo. That translates in Chinese to "Kingdom of Japan." So the two are totally different phrases. Adding and replacing characters completely changes the meaning of a phrase in Chinese. 日本國 = riben guo is just simply "Japan," so the Chinese you heard is correct. The simplest way to say "Japan" in Chinese, however, is to just drop 國 and make it a simple 日本 = riben.

I'm so glad I saw that I was not subscribed. I was and quickly changed that. Glad to see you again bud.

I swear youtube is reading my mind, this is the 7th time it has answered my question/ made a video I thought of JUST IN THE PAST WEEK! also, very interesting :D

Fascinating! You learn something new every day. My only qualm would be: ['raɪbən 'guːoʊ]? Seriously? I don't think I've ever heard such bad pronunciation of Mandarin.

It's Malay, not Mayla language, but gahhh. Make a video on why Greeks call their country Ellada!

Short, to the point, and informative. My mind of video.

I hope I can shed some light as a Cantonese speaker. In Cantonese, Japan is called 日本 jat6 bun2 (same characters as Mandarin and Japanese, and the J is the IPA /j/). In Middle Chinese, 日本 is pronounced something like nyit-pun, the ny sound being the palatal nasal (Spanish Ñ). So when it got borrowed to Japanese, it changed to a /n/, while it changed to a /j/ in Cantonese. (and the linguists here probably know that the sound change from /j/ to /ʤ/ is very common) And in Middle Japanese, /h/ sounds were originally /p/ sounds, thus creating two variations of the country's name, Nihon and Nippon.

In Bulgarian it's Yaponia, which is basically Yapon - much closer to Nippon though not quite there. I guess we got the name from another source...

'Guo' in Chinese can mean both 'country' and 'kingdom'. That's why China is 'Zhongguo' and was referred to as the 'Middle Kingdom'.

Can you do a video why Egypt has so many different names for their country (e.g. We call it 'Misr' in formal Arabic and 'Masr' in Egyptian Arabic) and their origins?

漢字exists 日means sun 本means roots people borrowed it: wareware wa 日本国 A Chinese dynasty: okay 日本 Dutch came, asking a southern Chinese person: wat is dat land? Southern Chinese person: YAH-pon! Dutch: ja Japon! Spanish: Si Japón(Hapon) French: oui Japon British: Aye JAPAN!

Nihon can also be called Nippon.

日本國(✓ 日本的國家(✕

Woa That was pretty interesting! In Portuguese we have always called it Japão, but since the "ão" is unpronounceable in English, it's usually replaced with "an" like in Spanish... who knows?

Good job on this video, enjoyed it as much as usual. Small suggestion though, your pronunciation of ”日本国“, "Malaysia" and the three Malay words for japan were really off, so maybe you could play samplings of the words spoken by dictionaries or native speaker recordings. It's not a big deal, but something I think would make a minor enhancement to your videos, in terms of exposing viewers to variations in pronunciation in different languages. That said, keep up the great content!

lol 'rye-ben goo-oh'

Why is my country called Finland or Fin-something everywhere when it's name in Finnish is Suomi?

Thanks for the video! ^_^

Chinese and Japanese come from different language families but use the same writing system (well, sort of). Thus, the characters meaning Sunrise are the same in both Japanese and Mandarin, but they are pronounced differently. In Japanese 日本 is read as "nippon" or "nihon". When the Chinese refer to Japanese proper nouns, they often spell the characters the same way, but use their own Chinese pronunciation. In Mandarin, the characters 日本 are pronounced "rìbĕn", but the "ri" part sounds like a mix between an English retroflex "r" and a "j", and the "b" in "bĕn" sounds like an English voiceless "p". Thus, "riben" could as well be phonetically transcribed from Chinese to English as "jipen". The thing is, whoever is responsible for calling the country "Japan", "Japón" (Spanish) or "Japão"(Portuguese) for the first time, must have learned that name from the Chinese, who use their own pronunciation to refer to Japanese nouns.

I thought it was Nippon

I love living in rye bin goo oh, it's a great place to be

China: *Like what?* Japan: *How about Sunriseland?*

different countries name In indonesian, japan = jepang singapore = singapura philiphines = filipina england = inggris spain = spanyol ireland = irlandia switzerland = swiss france = perancis USA = amerika serikat belgium = belgia brazil = brasil mexico = meksiko saudi arabia = arab saudi algeria = aljazair egypt = mesir turkey = turki sweden = swedia germany = jerman new zealand = selandia baru cambodia = kamboja greece = yunani czech republic = republik ceko netherlands = belanda

uhm, same here. It's NOT Germany or Germania or Allemagne or Alemania, but "Deutschland" :)

The name "Nihon" or "Nippon" is pronounced in Vietnamese as "Nhật Bản", from the original compound words in Chinese meaning "sun" and "source"/ origin.

Can you do one on Armenia? It goes by Hayastan in Armenian. Thanks!

I pressed the play button and as soon as this video came on a VOCALOID song started playing.

I think the difference between 日本的国家 and 日本国 is a matter of how pompous you can be. Like the use of "thou" instead of "you", I think.

why the fuk are pineapples called pineapples and not what they are called by everyone else?

日本的王國　does mean kingdom of japan. the one you put into google translate was different. the one you put into translate was 日本的國家 which is country of japan.

I don't mean to offend any Japanese here but the name 日本 "Where the sun rises", was founded in 671 AD, roughly the same period Baekje fell. Most probably because Baekje refugees migrated and settled in Japan and gave her a new name. Before 671, Japan's original name was 倭國, "country of midgets" it was too degrading a country name for Baekje refugees who now considered her their new home. It is highly unlikely the native people of Japan came up with the name "where the sun rises" themselves since the east of Japan is the Pacific Ocean. In the view from their position, the ocean would be where the sun rises. However, for people living in the nearby west of the Japanese archipelago, namely the Korean peninsula, were in a position of view such that the site where the sun rose lay in the direction towards Japan. For them it would have looked as if the sun rose out from the Japanese islands every morning. Probably it was the refugees came up with the idea to give their new home a new name, "Where the sun rises", which is 日本. "Historian Hiroshi Tsude estimated that as many as 1.8 million Koreans immigrated to Japan during the Yayoi period." -wikipedia. I wouldn't exactly call people who chose to become Japanese 1400 years ago "Koreans", it'd be like calling Normans at Hastings French. This is why modern Japanese and its grammar and syntax are similar to Korean than any other languages in the world. (Subject->Object->Verb grammatical structure, honorific suffices, topic markers, object markers. Chinese has none of these) Also, Japanese has 5,000 non-Kanji words that are similar to non-Hanja Korean words. Search on RU-vid: Japanese and Korean Language Similarities {English Subtitles}. I also read that the Baekje royal family was treated like special guests there. In 2001, Japan's emperor Akihito told reporters "I, on my part, feel a certain kinship with Korea, given the fact that it is recorded in the Chronicles of Japan that the mother of Emperor Kammu was of the line of King Muryong of Baekje." There is a modern day Japanese expression Kudaranai "くだらない" which means "nothing special", "not significant", "not impressive". It's a combination of Kudara + nai. Kudara means 'Baekje', nai means 'not'. So as an individual name, Kudara (Baekje) held such a special place in the hearts of ancient Japanese people, they said "not Kudara" to mean "not great".

Then, how about Nippon? Where did that came from?

日本的王国 literally means Japan's kingdom in Chinese. Google translate sucks, also Japan is and never was a kingdom, it's and Empire, so a more accurate Chinese spelling would be 大日本帝国(Empire of Great Japan) or 日本国(State of Japan). Also do a video on how the would "China" and it's derivatives don't exist in Chinese.

you have a vid about Egypt? It's called totally different in Arabic (Mishr)

What I heard was: “Nipon” in Chinese characters was pronounced as “Yaban” in Cantonese, while German missionaries in China wrote it as “Japan”, where “Ja” was spelt for a similar pronunciation “Ya” in German. And then in English we inherited the spelling but started to pronounce the J correctly, becoming “Japan” - according to my grandparents who know a little of German.

Great... now go and try doing Germany 😅

Why use the communist chinese flag? That didn't came into use loooooong until 1949

But where does Riben guo come from?

At 1:00 Your pronunciation of Japan in Chinese is slightly off- 日本 rì běn (usually you don't need the 国guó which means country) is said sort of like "jhi bun gwo." That's quite off though, since it's hard to express with English characters, so just use Google translate. This is an extraordinary video and it is interesting how all these words come together to be "Japan" in English. Question: do you know why Malaysians and Indonesians have a totally different name for Japan than the Japanese themselves? Also, you should make similar videos about why we call India India, and China China.

Why and how did they change the name from Yamato to Nihon ?

There existed a word called "Jippon" in Japan. It was also written in Vocabulário da Língua do Japão (1581-). PS. Nippon - Niphon - Nifhon - Nihon

Is there no traceable origin to Jepang, Jipang, and Jepun?

can you make video for why Egypt is called MISR in Arabic and called MASR in Egyptian

why is Türkiye called Turkey in English?? was it bc there were many turkeys (like the bird?) there or something??

This changed my life o.O

In China Fujian, the province near Japan, the local dialect call it "Jipun" (Nihon in kanji), which to me is close to what English name of it today.

actally i think Portugal had another role in the name, in Portuguese the name is japao and the last part pao means bread its possible the name might have some conection with that being that the word bread is one of the few words that were brought from Portugal to japan

Just to let you know, the name you typed into youtube is 「日本的國家」= "ri ben de guo jia" which means country of japan. The name you showed before that was 「日本的王國」 = "ri ben de wang guo" which means kingdom of japan.

What is 'Mayla'? (1:09)

Dropping the blue box in there was good. TY

Hey this is a pretty late comment, but some time ago I saw a documentary about the Dutch East indies in WW2 and the invasion of Japan, but the Dutch people in the documentary kept referring to the Japanese as the "Nipponners" . Just thought that was interesting.

Chinese characters (or "Kanji") are pronounced differently in Chinese and in Japanese. The name of Japan written in Kanji would be "日本", and would be pronounced close to "Riben" in modern Mandarin. If Marco Polo really is the one who spread the name, it make sense that he learnt the name in Chinese pronunciations. But the pronunciation would still be "Riben". The alphabet "J" sounds more like "Y" or "R" in Latin-based language. I suspect the word "Jepang" / "Jipang" / "Jepen" in their original language would sounds more similar to "yapan" than "japan". Which would be pronounced much closer to how "日本" is pronounced in Chinese. So it is possible when the word translated into English, the alphabet passed on instead of the pronunciation. (Much like John, Jesus and a whole class of English nouns).

The first western dictionary for japanese was a portuguese-japanese translation and they called it "Iapam".

is said blue box the box that michelle gave to melania? :3

you are correct, in mandarin 日本means Japan. The suffix 国 means country or nation such as China (中国 literally center of countries） but there are some cases where the country name will include that character such as France (法国) or America 美国)

So where did he get the idea of Japan in kingdom of japan?

国or國 (Guo)in Chinese refers to a kingdom. A 王国is a country with king thus a kingdom whereas 国家meant country. So it is not wrong to call ri ben guo 日本国 kingdom of Japan as well as the country of Japan

NIHON & NIPPON [I am a Japanese fluent in Japanese and English.] There is a sound-change called "ren-daku". For example, when counting long and skinny things like pens and sticks, the word ("counter word") HON 本 (The same HON as in Ni-hon) gets added to the number and then ren-daku occurs. 1. ichi + hon = ippon ("ho" to "po") 2. ni + hon = nihon 3. san + hon = sanbon ("ho" to "bo") 4. yon + hon = yonhon (Never "shihon"; it's a long story.) 5. go + hon = gohon 6. roku + hon = roppon ("ho" to "po") 日 (nichi) + 本 (hon) = Nippon Now on "NIHON". "Nichihon" is a little hard to say, so they dropped the "chi" and became "Nihon" (A weird exception). And at the same time, some people did the same thing as "ippon" above. That is why there are two names for the country in Japanese. The official one is "Nippon" and is used on paper money, etc. For "Nippon", "ippon", and "roppon", a different type of Japanese sound-change called "onbin" (specifically sokuonbin) is taking place as well. Examples: 日 nichi + 産 san = Nissan (The car company)(Not "Nisan") 殺 setsu + 生 shō (long O) + 丸 maru = Sesshōmaru (From the anime INUYASHA) NIHON and NIPPON are not necessarily interchangeable. When combined with other words, oftentimes only one of the two is used. For example, the names of animals and plants native to Japan are called "Nihon-XX". Examples: Nihon + saru (monkey) = Nihonzaru (Never "Nipponzaru") ("sa" becomes "za" due to rendaku) Nippon + ginkō (long O) = Nippon Ginkō (The Bank of Japan) NHK = Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) BUT Japanese person = Nihon-jin OR Nippon-jin (日本人) REFERENCE From the WIKIPEDIA Rendaku en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku Japanese counter word en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word Sokuon en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokuon

wait how did cipango come from Rì běn guó. i mean i get the go in cipango comes from guo but how does cipan come from ri ben. as someone who's been taught chinese, ri ben does not sound like cipan. i suppose some southern chinese dialects may have slowly changed how they call sun as mandarin was more north than south china

You've dedicated an entire RU-vid channel to obscure linguistics and etymology. I envy you, to be honest

how did you pronounce Malaysia again, mayla, mayland, whaaaat

The Indonesian/Malaysian "Jepun" might have been derived from Southern Min Chinese "Jit-Pun". While the whole China uses the same writing system, the dialectal differences may lead to different sounds. Hence, Cipangu, Jepang, Jipun, etc, even though Mandarin Chinese calls it Riben, and Japanese people call themselves Nihon. But these pronounciation differences are not really much of a problem, since the most important would be the Han character (Hanzi or Kanji) for it, 日本, which means the same thing all over the world where people know what the meanings are, despite phonetic differences.

why is Giappone in Italian? and Japon in France and Spain

In the time Polo went there, Mandarin wasn't used as the official language. The pronunciation of Classical Chinese is closest to that of Hokkien, (the Chinese spoken on the east coast, Taiwan and Singapore).. in which it is pronounced "zhit-bun/lit-bun" depending on the dialect

The tenth book in the "Ranger's Apprentice" series by John Flanagan is THE EMPEROR OF NIHON-JA. Great series based on a fictionalized medieval world.

In Spanish, Japan is Japón. Pronunciated like Nippon, an alternative name for Nihon.

I don't know if it's more or less recent than these, but the Cantonese name for the country is "Yat bun." So that's a thing.

The closest I could think of is the pronunciation of Japan in Chinese dialect, like Cantonese. They call Japan as "Yapun". Which in some European language, Y sound use J in spelling. So became Japun, then later Japon in French, Japan in English and German.

Anyone from Japan watching? I have a few friends who have been and Japan I must say you are wonderful country full of amazing people and things. And hello from a fan from Scotland

I remember doing some research on this a while ago. Most commonly I found people would refer to Japan as "Nihon," or "Nippon." But do to the other cultures trying to refer to Japan by a name they made up I think variations like "Jippon," "Jappon," and "Japan" which are probably only when in reference to Japanese people talking about Japan to a non Japanese person. Interestingly there are also older names for Japan like "Yamato" or the oldest one I could find evidence of "Wa." When looking at traditional Japanese products like Japanese knives/ swords you'll find such a name attributed to describe it's authenticity like a "Wa Gyuto" is a chef's knife (gyuto) made in Japan (wa). In what I found it really depends and it's not a cut an dry thing like "Canada" where I live because of the long and mixed history of Japan and it's different cultures have their own preferences.

I think I remember a teacher saying (he may or may not have been accurate) that country's names were often essential "Us right here" for their own country, and "those folks over there" for other countries. Naturally, this means countries get different names depending on who's talking.

A contribution I can make is that in Hokkien, a Southern Chinese dialect, Nippon is called Jeet-poon. Traders from here sailed around Asia and thus they influenced the Malay and Indonesian pronunciation.

Your Chinese pronunciation makes me cry. Good job on the other parts though.

next video, why is Japan called nihon in Japanese????!???

I am from Malaysia and do you know why Malayan called Japan 'Jepun'? It is because the language at the older times is very influenced by Chinese dialects which is brought there by the traders from China. It is derived fro the Hokkien dialect, which is the most popular dialect beside Hakka in the Chinese community during that time. In Hokkien, Nihon or Riben (日本) is pronounced as Jippun. Which then translate into Jepun and Japan. I am aghast that you mentioned so many other source without investigating into the most influential source countries pronunciation for the Asian countries: the Chinese. That being said, how many countries called other countries are mainly influenced by the Chinese. I said Chinese instead of Mandarin because during the era, mandarin was only spoken by a minority of people instead Cantonese and other dialects like Hakka and Hokkien were the main communicating languages among Chinese traders. Same goes for Korea which was originated from Goryeo, or Kole or similar ponunciation by other dialects （高麗）. Which then adapted to become Korea.