Country Names in Kanji

In the past articles we have looked at non-Japanese names in kanji, popular Japanese names in kanji and four-kanji-idioms. This time, let us have a look at how countries can be written in kanji.

The kanji application for countries started a bit more than a century ago when Japan re-opened the country and restarted foreign diplomacy. As we have seen in the past articles on kanji names and yojijukugo, combinations of kanji can create and carry comprehensive meanings. However, because the sounds of the names of countries are already set, the kanji application for country names were decided most times phonetically and therefore the meanings do not come along as something that make sense. This is called “ateji” in Japanese: “ate” means to apply and “ji” means letter or character.

Hence, as you go through the country names in kanji and try to understand the meanings you will probably find it difficult to come up with any significant meaning. If you know some kanji already and know how to pronounce them, you will also see that the ways they are read for these names are extremely odd and irregular. This is also the characteristic and charm of ateji. The way country names are read in Japanese are sometimes different from how they are read in English, so some of them may appear unfamiliar… or even unrecognizable. The Japanese pronunciation is written in Romaji. In any case, have fun exploring the world of Japanese kanji!

Below is only a small part of the collection, more are to follow soon (mostly chosen from the countries we have traffic from).
If you want to know how your country name is written in kanji, feel free to give us an e-mail and we’ll put your request on the update priority list.