How do you say ‘Japan’ in Japanese? If you thought this would be a simple, straightforward answer, think again!
Of course I could just make this a short post and tell you that the answer is: Nihon or Nippon, but the truth is that there is a bit more to the story.
I would be doing you a disservice by not explaining its origin and history, the variations in pronunciation as well as meaning!
If you are a linguistics nerd like me, you will find the etymology of both the country’s native name and foreign name super interesting!
Origins of 日本
‘Japan’ is written in kanji characters as 日本. As previously stated, it has two pronunciations in Japanese: Nihon (にほん) and Nippon (にっぽん).
You may have heard Japan being referred to as ‘the land of the rising sun’ in English. We can see where this translation comes from when we deconstruct the kanji compound for Japan: it’s made from the character for ‘sun’ 日 and the character for ‘origin’ 本.
