Names of Japan

  The English word Japan is an exonym. The Japanese names for Japan are Nippon (にっぽん^?)  listen (help·info) and Nihon (にほん^?)  listen (help·info); both names are written using the kanji 日本. The Japanese name Nippon is used for most official purposes, including on Japanese yen, postage stamps, and for many international sporting events. Nihon is a more casual term and is used in colloquial speech.

From the Meiji Restoration until the end of World War II, the full title of Japan was Dai Nippon Teikoku (大日本帝國^?), meaning "theEmpire of Great Japan". Today the name Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku (日本国^?) is used as a formal modern-day equivalent; countries like Japan whose long form does not contain a descriptive designation are generally given a name appended by the character koku(国^?), meaning "country", "nation" or "state".

Japanese people refer to themselves as Nihonjin (日本人^?) and to their language as Nihongo (日本語^?). Both Nippon and Nihon mean "sun-origin" and are often translated as Land of the Rising Sun. This nomenclature comes from Japanese missions to Imperial Chinaand refers to Japan's eastward position relative to China. Before Nihon came into official use, Japan was known as Wa (倭^?) or Wakoku(倭国^?).^[14]

The English word for Japan came to the West via early trade routes. The early Mandarin or possibly Wu Chinese (吳語) word for Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本 'Japan' isZeppen [zəʔpən]. The old Malay word for Japan, Jepang, was borrowed from Chinese Jih'pen'kuo (日本国)in one or other of its coastal dialect forms, probably Fukienese or Ningpo,^[15] and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Malacca in the 16th century. Portuguese traders were the first to bring the word to Europe.^[16] It was first recorded in English in a 1565 letter, spelledGiapan.^[17]