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5.3. Where does the name Japan come from?

Others say that when Marco Polo visited China, Chinese pronunciation was close enough to modern Mandarin that the character for "day/sun" was a retroflex fricative, something like the "Z" in "Zaza Gabor," or "j" and "r" pronounced simultaneously and held for a syllable. The character for "origin/root/bookscroll" was read something like "pun" (as in modern Mandarin, though it sounds more like the English word "bun" to English speakers), so Marco Polo did the best he could in Italian with what sounded to him like "jrjrrrpun". The weakest part of this account is the attribution to M. Polo; perhaps it was somebody who came along later?

See also 3.5. What are the names of Japan?

Acknowledgements

Edited from a post by Bart Mathias.

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