Japanese exonyms are the names of places in the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

that differ from the name given in the place's dominant language. While Japanese names of places that are not derived from the

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the ...

generally tend to represent the endonym or the English

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

as phonetically accurately as possible, the Japanese terms for some place names are obscured, either because the name was borrowed from another language or because of some other obscure etymology, such as referring to England (more specifically the United Kingdom) as (''Igirisu''), which is based on the Portuguese term for "English", ''Inglês''. Exonyms for cities outside of the

East Asian cultural sphere The East Asian cultural sphere, also known as the Sinosphere, the Sinic world, the Sinitic world, the Chinese cultural sphere, the Chinese character sphere encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically ...

tend to be more phonetically accurate to their endonyms than the

English exonyms An English exonym is a name in the English language for a place (a toponym), or occasionally other terms, which does not follow the local usage (the endonym). Exonyms and endonyms are features of all languages and other languages may have their own ...

if the endonym is significantly different from the English exonym. The names for nations and cities that existed before major Japanese orthographic reforms in the Meiji era usually have

ateji In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji use ...

, or

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

characters used solely to represent pronunciation. However, the use of ateji today has become far less common, as

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

has largely taken over the role of phonetically representing words of non- Sino-Japanese origin. As significant differences exist between the pronunciations of the Chinese and Japanese languages, many of the ateji terms for the exonyms of foreign, non-Sinitic terms are unrecognizable in Chinese, and likewise, since some of the ateji terms derived from Chinese, the aforementioned terms do not match the Japanese '' on'' or '' kun'' readings for the pronunciation of the given kanji.

Afghanistan

Algeria

Andorra

Argentina

Australia

Austria

Brazil

Cambodia

Chile

China

For place names derived from the Chinese language, Japanese typically uses the kanji equivalents of the

Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...

that make up their respective endonyms, albeit with a Sino-Japanese pronunciation called ''on'' readings. Some place names, however, also have an approximate pronunciation (or transcription) of a historical English exonym if the area is internationally well-known, such as Beijing and Hong Kong, and such transcriptions tend to be more common than the ''on-yomi'' or the Mandarin transcriptions. Most place names derived from Mandarin also have a Japanese transcription of the Mandarin pronunciation. One detail to be noted, however, is that for the names of certain districts or areas in Hong Kong and Macau, the pronunciations of the Japanese transcriptions typically try to imitate the

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

pronunciation instead of the

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

pronunciation. The Chinese characters for the endonyms above are

simplified Chinese characters Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, as prescribed by the ''Table of General Standard Chinese Characters''. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one o ...

and will only appear in the table above if they differ from the kanji shinjitai (the current set of Japanese kanji). Most transcriptions above can be written either in kanji or katakana.

Czech Republic

Denmark

Egypt

France

Germany

Greece

Iceland

India

Since India is home to many different languages and English is an official language in the country, Japanese exonyms are largely based on the English exonyms. The English exonyms are also familiar to many Indians.

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Japanese exonyms for Italian place names are generally based on the Italian pronunciation rather than English exonyms.

Kazakhstan

Laos

Liechtenstein

Malaysia

Mexico

Myanmar

Netherlands

New Zealand

North Korea

Norway

Pakistan

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Russia

Saudi Arabia

South Africa

South Korea

While most

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

n place names are derived from words in the Chinese language, Japanese can refer to a

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

place name using Japanese ''on-yomi'' ( is in Japanese) or a pronunciation that imitates the Korean endonym name as closely as possible ( is or in Japanese). Many place names in Korea have at least two of the pronunciations, the first being based on the Japanese ''on-yomi'' or ''kun-yomi'' and the second being based on the Korean endonym, with the latter being made so that the Japanese could navigate and ask for directions more clearly to native Koreans. Korean-based pronunciations are usually written in katakana.

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Taiwan

Similar to Chinese exonyms, Japanese can either use a transcription based on Mandarin or the Japanese ''on-yomi'' of the endonym. However, there are some Japanese place names that are unrelated to the Chinese name of the place, but are actually based on the Taiwanese aboriginal languages.

Thailand

Turkey

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United States

Vietnam

References

*Nelson, Andrew N. (1962) ''The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary'' (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company)

External links

List of countries in Ateji
{{DEFAULTSORT:Exonyms, Japanese Japanese language Japanese culture-related lists Transliteration Japanese names

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...