Japan (Japanese: 日本, [ɲihoɴ], Nippon or Nihon, and formally 日本国,
Nihonkoku) is an island country in East Asia. The name for Japan in
Japanese is written using the kanji 日本 and is pronounced Nippon or
Nihon.
Before 日本 was adopted in the early 8th century, the country was
known in China as Wa (倭, changed in Japan around 757 to 和) and in Japan
by the endonym Yamato. Nippon, the original Sino-Japanese reading of the
characters, is favored for official uses, including on banknotes and
postage stamps.
Nihon is typically used in everyday speech and reflects
shifts in Japanese phonology during the Edo period.
The characters 日本
mean "sun origin", which is the source of the popular Western epithet
"Land of the Rising Sun". The name "Japan" is based on Chinese
pronunciations of 日本 and was introduced to European languages through
early trade.
In the 13th century, Marco Polo recorded the early Mandarin
or Wu Chinese pronunciation of the characters 日本國 as Cipangu.
The old
Malay name for Japan, Japang or Japun, was borrowed from a southern
coastal Chinese dialect and encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast
Asia, who brought the word to Europe in the early 16th century.
The first
version of the name in English appears in a book published in 1577, which
spelled the name as Giapan in a translation of a 1565 Portuguese letter.