2012-08-01
■ ジャパン(チェンバレン) 
Japan. Our word "Japan," and the Japanese Nihon or
Nippon, are alike corruptions of Jih-pen, the Chinese pronunciation of the characters 日本, literally " sun-origin," that is, " the
place the sun comes from,"---a name given to Japan by the
Chinese on account of the position of the archipelago to the
east of their own country. Marco Polo's Zipanpu and the poets’
Cipango are from the same Chinese compound, with the addition
of the word kuo 國 , which means " country."
The name Nihon (" Japan ") seems to have been first officially
employed by the Japanese government in A. D. 670. Before
that time, the usual native designation of the country was
Yamato, properly the name of one of the central provinces.
Yamato and O-mi-kuni, that is, " the Great August Country,"
are the names still preferred in poetry and belles-lettres. Japan
has other ancient names, some of which are of learned length
and thundering sound, for instance, Toyo-ashi-wara-no-chi-aki,-no-
naga-i-ho-aki-no-mizu-ho-no-kuni, that is, " the-Luxuriant-Reed-
Plains-the-Laud-of-Fresh-Rice-Ears- of -a-Thousand-Autumns-of
Long-Five-Hundred-Autumns." But we shall not detain the
reader with an enumeration of them. Any further curiosity on
this head may be satisfied by consulting the pages of the
Kojiki." (See Asiatic Transactions, Vol. X. Supplement.)http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=qcMYAAAAYAAJ&hl=ja&pg=PA227#v=onepage&q&f=false
『日本事物誌』
