The word Japan is an exonym, and is used (in one form or another) by many languages. The Japanese names for Japan are Nihon ([ɲi.hoꜜɴ] ) and Nippon ([ɲip.poꜜɴ] ). They are both written in Japanese using the kanji 日本.
Since the third century, Chinese called the people of the Japanese archipelago something like "ˀWâ" (倭), which can also mean "dwarf" or "submissive". Japanese scribes found fault with its offensive connotation, and officially changed the characters they used to spell the native name for Japan, Yamato, replacing the 倭 ("dwarf") character for Wa with the homophone 和 ("peaceful, harmonious"). Wa 和 was often combined with 大 ("great") to form the name 大和, which is read as Yamato (see also Jukujikun for a discussion of this type of spelling where the kanji and pronunciations are not directly related). The earliest record of 日本 appears in the Chinese Old Book of Tang, which notes the change in 703 when Japanese envoys requested that its name be changed. It is believed that the name change within Japan itself took place sometime between 665 and 703. During the Heian period, 大和 was gradually replaced by 日本, which was first pronounced with the sound reading (on'yomi) Nippon and later as Nifon, and then in modern usage Nihon, reflecting shifts in phonology in Early Modern Japanese. In 1076, Turkic scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari in his book Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk mentioned this country as 'Jabarqa' (جَابَرْقَا). Marco Polo called Japan 'Cipangu' around 1300, based on the Chinese enunciation of the name, probably 日本國; 'sun source country' (compare modern Min Nan pronunciation ji̍t pún kok). In the 16th century in Malacca, Portuguese traders first heard from Indonesian and Malay the names Jepang, Jipang, and Jepun. In 1577 it was first recorded in English, spelled Giapan. At the end of the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries came to coastal islands of Japan and created brief grammars and dictionaries of Middle Japanese for the purpose of trade. The 1603–1604 dictionary Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam has 2 entries: nifon and iippon. Since then many derived names of Japan appeared on early-modern European maps.
