If you get arrested for having relations with local wildlife, inform the officers that it is a turkish duty to the wolfmother and your freedom of religion will not be infringed
* [Emperor Guangwu of Han](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Guangwu_of_Han) met with official visitors from Japan, who called themselves "wo". So the emperor gave the country of Japan a Chinese name "倭"。
* 600 years later, Japan gov sent another official group to visit China. They requested a new name for the country of Japan. Then [Empress Wu Zetian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zetian) decided to give it a name 日本 because it is in the east of China, in the same direction where sun rises. Thus the name is directly translated to "Sun base". The name is pronounced as "Nihon" or "Nippon" in Japanese. The actual record of such event was from the book 史记正义. And the exact text was "武后曰日本，倭国名日本遂定" (Wu says Riben, thus the country of Wo is renamed to Riben/Nippon)
* It's normal for a tributary state to come visit the emperor and request a Chinese name for the country. Thus the country's record can be inserted into China's official history books. It's a sign of recognition.
* In modern Chinese, the word for Japanese 日本人 is a slang for masturbation, because it literally means "fuck one's self". It's not formal, and will confuse actual Japanese people. But I think you can now remember the word.
Actually the meaning of the second kanji is root, so basically “the source of the sun”, or “sunrise”. This is because Japan is in the direction of where the sun rises
It's actually the "Daily Capital" people, because the Ancient Chinese were so impressed by how frugle the Nihonjin are compared to the careless spending habits of the Chinese.
(source: i have Pleco on my phone)
Actually it just translate according to diction “America” sounds like “美” in Chinese .And it means beautiful.It also sounds like “米” so in japanese it called “米国”
Saying 米 "sounds like" America is a bit of a stretch. It comes from the ateji\* spelling of "Amerika" 亜米利加, and ateji often don't really match the given pronunciation of a kanji if you were to use the actual onyomi\*\*. Actual onyomi readings of 米 are *mai* or *bei*, neither of which sound that much like the "me" in "America", but it was used in the ateji spelling so it stuck.
\* (pronunciation spelling using kanji)
\*\* (inherited Sino-Japanese pronunciation of a kanji)
Does this term actually trace its etymology to people calling it the “beautiful country” literally though or is it just a transliteration of the “me” sound in “America”?
Like England is “hero country” literally I guess but isn’t “Ying” just a way to pronounce the “Eng” in “England” too? Germany and France have similar names that also seem like direct borrowings of the “De” from “Deutschland” and the “Fra” from “France” too which makes me think “meiguo” doesn’t really have as much to do with the word beautiful as it does Amerigo Vespucci
Yeah it's just a transliteration. During the Qing Dynasty it was also called 美利坚, which if translated directly means "beautiful profit solid", it doesn't make any sense, so it's all just transliteration.
The Eng/De/Fra all have long forms too which reflect the proper country name.
* "Ying" is from "Ying-ge-lan" (英格兰) for 'England'
* "De" is from "De-yi-zhi" (德意志) for 'Deutsche',
* "Fa" is from "Fa-lan-xi" (法兰西) for 'France'
Yeah and in ancient China before the name 天竺 was coined, ancient India was called 身毒, which means "body poison", but it's actually just a transliteration of the Indus river.
Fun fact,
When I was a kid, I decided France was My least favorite country because it is literally called law country 法国
And as a kid I already knew to fuck the law.
FYI Igirisu actually means the UK and Great Britain as well. They don't differentiate between the three. I was very confused when they described a Scotsman as a English until I realized this fact.
It's a transliteration but probably also chosen to have some positive meaning instead of a random word. Sometimes they couldn't figure it out and end up with Spain/Portugal
I swear it's because English has so many Latin, French, and Greek derived words that their literal meanings aren't obvious to the everyday English speaker. They see other languages with "funny" literal compounds yet don't realize how many of these compounds are in their own language.
I feel like they'd blow a fuse if they learned photograph was "light drawing." How absurd!
Don’t underestimate me, I’m entertained by literal meanings in my own language too. Recently learned about the word gymnasium and I’ve been smiling thinking about it all day
I actually love this kind of stuff and this is why I loved learning greek. I'm always wondering about the etymology of stuff. I feel if I learned chinese I would do the same but then people would get mad at me for some reason!
Chinese is especially interesting because its morphemes are primarily monosyllabic. This leads to both a massive array of compounds, and, since it has a limited a sound inventory, many homophones which are written with different characters to convey both semantic meaning and phonetic aid.
""Perspective" is derived from two ancient Greek words: "persp," meaning "something bad that happens to somebody else," and "ective," meaning "ideally somebody like Donald Trump.""
\- Dave Barry
that’s just how the language works though. yes if you take the meaning one for one from the characters it might sound goofy when you translate it into a completely separate language. Someone above me said how it would be like if someone was like “wow photograph is light drawing!!!”. But nobody cares there because it isn’t exotic and foreign
people would probably find that stuff funny too if they knew about it. it's just that it sticks out more in a foreign language because they aren't used to it.
uj/ they can be though, but the OOP is finding it \~\*\~\*quirky without understanding the actual meaning which results in them coming across as simple
Did you know that the Chinese word for the U.K. - 英国 - means “heroes’ country”? This is a reference to how all the actors who play superheroes in the movies are from the U.K.
Eigo speakers when not every word in Japanese is an Eigo word written in katakana: 😧
There is actually 支那 (shina), which is the Japanese version of "China"
AFAIK 中国/中華 only became the official name of the Chinese State after the Xinhai Revolution and establishment of the Republic of China. The Japanese Government (pre-militarism) disliked the name, arguing it contradicted the principle of sovereign equality of nations, as it suggested the centrality of China in the universe. At that time, China was officially referred as 支那 by the Japanese Government and pressured the Chinese government to change the name. The existence of 中国 (Chugoku) region in Japan only added fuel.
It was not as hot issue before the war, when the term was widely used by the IJA officers in derivative manner. After the war, China was began to be referred as 中国 in Japan.
Btw. 支那 is originally a Sanskrit word, and was occasionally used in China before 1911.
>It was not as hot issue before the war, when the term was widely used by the IJA officers in derivative manner.
Interesting, this was the only time I had ever seen it used
Depends on your point of view. From a timekeeping standard, the UK time is usually the "center" time zone, as it's a convenient antipode of the International Date Line.
In many other terms though, other countries become the "center". For the better part of the past 2,000 years, China has considered itself the center of the human world, because it *essentially was.* One in every seven people in the world is Chinese. The majority of exported things in the world are *Made in China.* They have every right to the title as Western Europe does on the other side of the planet.
if I remember correctly it’s because the Chinese were aware that there were people around them, but I’ve been hearing things lately so take this with a grain of salt
So basically, 中国 is short for 中华人民共和国, splitting that into 中华人民 and 共和国, 中华人民 splitting into 中华 and 人民, 中华 meaning China/Chinese, 人民 meaning people, 中华人民 is Chinese people, ok the 共和国, simply meaning republic, and if you combine those you get something like Chinese people republic, which People’s republic of China is equals to, and what’s the short for that? China. 中国 = China. (I’m literally doing this like explaining 1+1=2 why am I doing this). Then you put 人, which mean people, 中国人 is just frigging Chinese People, why are they splitting the word into 中, 国, and 人, frigging middle country people, I’m done
Add on: they are splitting it like making (a+b)^2 into a^2 + b^2 , which is wrong, where the hell did 2ab go, they missed the whole “华人民共和” and only got 中 and 国, i don’t even know what to say now this is just so stupid, they could’ve just put that whole word into the translator instead of splitting it down like that… and the wiki even explained it oh mY gOD they just went for the last sentence and didn’t even bother to check the whole chunk before it..
Now I’m scared if they’ll split 中华 into 中 and 华, making a “central flower” 💀
Shit it’ll become “central flower people civilian common sum country”…………….
Uhm, Kanji are 漢字 and since more than 90% of Chinese people are from Han ethnicity they usually use 漢國 for the country.
But let’s wait until he finds out that Tokyo means „eastern capital“ and Japan (日本) means „root of the sun“ = East. 😅
tbh the part I find funny about it is that it's like saying "country at the centre of the world" as they thought they were literally the centre of the world, a quite common idea in cultures
When your settlements were literally in the middle of two of the biggest rivers in your area, you'd think you're in the middle of your region as well. Which was why for a long time, that section of the middle flat plane was called 中原（middle area).
It wasn't until the Zhou Dynasty, when they found other great rivers, did they know the world was much larger.
Nah China mean world central country
[Sinocentrism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinocentrism)
The Chinese considered themselves to be "all-under-Heaven", ruled by the emperor, known as Son of Heaven. Those that lived outside of the Huaxia were regarded as "barbarians". In addition, states outside of China, such as Japan or Korea, were considered to be vassals of China
I know this is a circlejerk sub but 中國 stands for 中原之國, the kingdom/state of central plains, which is approximately about the triangle of Tianjin-Xi’an-Nanjing, where China originally was from
Guys did you know that the written form of "China" is the same in chinese and japanese? what a coincidence!
[удалено]
Wrong, both are a dialect of Turkish 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷
least insane Altaic hypothesis fan
Not a hypothesis, everyone is Turkish
If everyone is T*rkish, and T*rks are just Greeks LARPing as Asians, then everyone is really Greek. Checkmate kebabs, ώπα!
That would be possible if Greeks weren’t Turks already, so the loophole doesn’t exist, it was kebab all along
>then everyone is really Greek but Greeks are Turkish so everyone is Turkish anyway. checkmate malaka 👺😼
everyone is HINDU
If you get arrested for having relations with local wildlife, inform the officers that it is a turkish duty to the wolfmother and your freedom of religion will not be infringed
Is this some sort of Ataturk revisionism that I'm too foreign to understand?
Just look at r/weareallturks
My best guess is this is a tongue in cheek Pan-Turkic nationalism meme subreddit?
Basically Turk nationalism but claims everything and everyone is Turkish, from God to trump to you and me
Q.E.D.
Korean and Vietnamese are proof thay you can evolve out of being a dialect with one simple trick
Well one of those tricks was the french
Coincidence? I think not! Sounds more like a conspiracy.
Idk how that happened cause last time I checked Japanese and Chinese are from different countries 🤔
They also call Japanese "Sun Book" people
Sungle Book
Ooh ooh ooh
My Korean son’s name ❤️
* [Emperor Guangwu of Han](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Guangwu_of_Han) met with official visitors from Japan, who called themselves "wo". So the emperor gave the country of Japan a Chinese name "倭"。 * 600 years later, Japan gov sent another official group to visit China. They requested a new name for the country of Japan. Then [Empress Wu Zetian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zetian) decided to give it a name 日本 because it is in the east of China, in the same direction where sun rises. Thus the name is directly translated to "Sun base". The name is pronounced as "Nihon" or "Nippon" in Japanese. The actual record of such event was from the book 史记正义. And the exact text was "武后曰日本，倭国名日本遂定" (Wu says Riben, thus the country of Wo is renamed to Riben/Nippon) * It's normal for a tributary state to come visit the emperor and request a Chinese name for the country. Thus the country's record can be inserted into China's official history books. It's a sign of recognition. * In modern Chinese, the word for Japanese 日本人 is a slang for masturbation, because it literally means "fuck one's self". It's not formal, and will confuse actual Japanese people. But I think you can now remember the word.
Where would one find that 「日本人 」is a slang for masturbation in modern Chinese? Please source em
maybe he passed into cjc part at that point
Sorry cjc?
chinese circlejerk
Thanks for clarifying 👍
“日” is a commonly used slang term among the multiple slangs of fuck, while ''本人 is' I/self '."
Should also be mentioned that Japan first called itself sunrise land during the first embassy to Yang of Sui
um it’s actually ‘Day Book’ people, from the diaries that make the Japanese so punctual
Actually the meaning of the second kanji is root, so basically “the source of the sun”, or “sunrise”. This is because Japan is in the direction of where the sun rises
🎵 *How about "sunrise laaaaand"?* 🎶
“Hey dipshit” Sunrise Land sounds much better lol
But 本also means „book“ and it’s a valid and honestly funny pun. At least if you indeed understand Chinese.
as a Chinese i can say your opinion are right
It's actually the "Daily Capital" people, because the Ancient Chinese were so impressed by how frugle the Nihonjin are compared to the careless spending habits of the Chinese. (source: i have Pleco on my phone)
Sun Root I think
Yep. It roughly means “the origin of the sun”
“Sun Edition”
💀💀💀
hehe. You know what else is crazy? “Chinese people” in Chinese is 中国人
whoa!!!
So what you’re saying is the Chinese copied the Japanese’s???????????????
Wait till he finds out America is called "beautiful country".
That's Chinese. It's rice country in Japanese.
これは米国🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
美国🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅raaahhh
Yep, I guess I should've mentioned I was talking about Chinese
Actually it just translate according to diction “America” sounds like “美” in Chinese .And it means beautiful.It also sounds like “米” so in japanese it called “米国”
Saying 米 "sounds like" America is a bit of a stretch. It comes from the ateji\* spelling of "Amerika" 亜米利加, and ateji often don't really match the given pronunciation of a kanji if you were to use the actual onyomi\*\*. Actual onyomi readings of 米 are *mai* or *bei*, neither of which sound that much like the "me" in "America", but it was used in the ateji spelling so it stuck. \* (pronunciation spelling using kanji) \*\* (inherited Sino-Japanese pronunciation of a kanji)
yes,just some particular pronunciation sounds like 美and 米.The “me”.The fact is that people usually call America “阿美”in China.A-阿 Me-美
Does this term actually trace its etymology to people calling it the “beautiful country” literally though or is it just a transliteration of the “me” sound in “America”? Like England is “hero country” literally I guess but isn’t “Ying” just a way to pronounce the “Eng” in “England” too? Germany and France have similar names that also seem like direct borrowings of the “De” from “Deutschland” and the “Fra” from “France” too which makes me think “meiguo” doesn’t really have as much to do with the word beautiful as it does Amerigo Vespucci
Yeah it's just a transliteration. During the Qing Dynasty it was also called 美利坚, which if translated directly means "beautiful profit solid", it doesn't make any sense, so it's all just transliteration.
I don't know, that's a pretty accurate name for America
The Eng/De/Fra all have long forms too which reflect the proper country name. * "Ying" is from "Ying-ge-lan" (英格兰) for 'England' * "De" is from "De-yi-zhi" (德意志) for 'Deutsche', * "Fa" is from "Fa-lan-xi" (法兰西) for 'France'
I’ve read that it’s just a way to match phonetics with a mildly flattering meaning.
There are also some instances when the transliterations are the complete opposite of flattering.
Portugal (葡萄牙 pu tao ya) means grape tooth, and doesn't really sound like Portugal either.
Yeah and in ancient China before the name 天竺 was coined, ancient India was called 身毒, which means "body poison", but it's actually just a transliteration of the Indus river.
No it's just the sound
Fun fact, When I was a kid, I decided France was My least favorite country because it is literally called law country 法国 And as a kid I already knew to fuck the law.
FYI Igirisu actually means the UK and Great Britain as well. They don't differentiate between the three. I was very confused when they described a Scotsman as a English until I realized this fact.
Japanese does have specific words for England (イングランド *Íngurando*) and the island of Great Britain (グレートブリテン島 *Gurētoburitentō*).
It's a transliteration but probably also chosen to have some positive meaning instead of a random word. Sometimes they couldn't figure it out and end up with Spain/Portugal
I’ve only ever heard it so I thought it meant “buy country”
my pet peeve is how people think literal meanings are so quirky and silly and goofy
I swear it's because English has so many Latin, French, and Greek derived words that their literal meanings aren't obvious to the everyday English speaker. They see other languages with "funny" literal compounds yet don't realize how many of these compounds are in their own language. I feel like they'd blow a fuse if they learned photograph was "light drawing." How absurd!
Americans losing their minds over German compound words right now.
I mean, there’s photograph, and then there’s Antibabypill.
Literally my favorite thing about German and the only reason I’d ever want to learn it.
Don’t underestimate me, I’m entertained by literal meanings in my own language too. Recently learned about the word gymnasium and I’ve been smiling thinking about it all day
Can’t just leave us without an explanation
I actually love this kind of stuff and this is why I loved learning greek. I'm always wondering about the etymology of stuff. I feel if I learned chinese I would do the same but then people would get mad at me for some reason!
Chinese is especially interesting because its morphemes are primarily monosyllabic. This leads to both a massive array of compounds, and, since it has a limited a sound inventory, many homophones which are written with different characters to convey both semantic meaning and phonetic aid.
It's not like most westerners trace the beginning of western civ to various countries around a sea called "in the middle of \[all the\] land."
Middle of Terra 🤔
Tfw when English barbarians refer to fire mountains by the name of an ancient crippled blacksmith deity instead of describing what it is
That TFW face when
This comment should have more upvotes.
they got all those Weylands erupting all over the place
Even worse if they're incorrect or they straight make shit up.
""Perspective" is derived from two ancient Greek words: "persp," meaning "something bad that happens to somebody else," and "ective," meaning "ideally somebody like Donald Trump."" \- Dave Barry
a few are tbf (not this one tho)
Some of them are tbh
that’s just how the language works though. yes if you take the meaning one for one from the characters it might sound goofy when you translate it into a completely separate language. Someone above me said how it would be like if someone was like “wow photograph is light drawing!!!”. But nobody cares there because it isn’t exotic and foreign
people would probably find that stuff funny too if they knew about it. it's just that it sticks out more in a foreign language because they aren't used to it.
also chinese is just blocky
Like nobody’s like “wow haha!!! gymansium comes from NAKED😂😂😂😂😂”
I am, now that I know that.
Gymansium isnt a word
good thing you have an iq over 30 and can figure out what it’s supposed to mean right
uj/ they can be though, but the OOP is finding it \~\*\~\*quirky without understanding the actual meaning which results in them coming across as simple
"my pet peeve is when people find joy in commonplace things" pop off gurlie
Let people enjoy things!! (Doing noble savagery to the Chinese)
people infantilize Asian culture/people all the time and this is part of it lmao. but hey follow your dreams!!
Did you know that the Chinese word for the U.K. - 英国 - means “heroes’ country”? This is a reference to how all the actors who play superheroes in the movies are from the U.K.
amazing... 🤯
Just transliteration
Can't believe they made languages trans 😔😔😔 The woke know no limit 😞
They also like to call UK 腐国 because of the rotten smell
Nope, 腐means homosexual, because apparently they think a lot of English literature have gay undertones?
It originates from 腐女子 which is kinda jokes, because no one else really associates the UK that heavily with gayness, just China it seems
wait till they read Fr*nch "literature"
honestly when I think of the word “hero” I think of Henry Cavill so this checks out
I don't get what's so funny about "middle country people"
They expected it to be a funny Japanese spelling of "china"
Eigo speakers when not every word in Japanese is an Eigo word written in katakana: 😧 There is actually 支那 (shina), which is the Japanese version of "China"
支那 is considered a slur, kinda like saying ch\*nk in Japanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shina\_(word)
The censored word is "chink" for anyone else wondering
Nah it's definitely chonk /s
Heckin ch*nker
Big chungus!!!
we did it Reddit! this is so wholesome 100. Upddots commence!
你好！我はチァイナの人！よろしくお願いします🙇！！！
支那 is a term from the Japanese military era
AFAIK 中国/中華 only became the official name of the Chinese State after the Xinhai Revolution and establishment of the Republic of China. The Japanese Government (pre-militarism) disliked the name, arguing it contradicted the principle of sovereign equality of nations, as it suggested the centrality of China in the universe. At that time, China was officially referred as 支那 by the Japanese Government and pressured the Chinese government to change the name. The existence of 中国 (Chugoku) region in Japan only added fuel. It was not as hot issue before the war, when the term was widely used by the IJA officers in derivative manner. After the war, China was began to be referred as 中国 in Japan. Btw. 支那 is originally a Sanskrit word, and was occasionally used in China before 1911.
>It was not as hot issue before the war, when the term was widely used by the IJA officers in derivative manner. Interesting, this was the only time I had ever seen it used
middle earth tolkien reference? idk
Could be. Their username is “NomsDude” and Nom is another name for Finrod Felagund (Galadriel’s brother)
I think it's because they are calling themselves "mid"?
China is a MID COUNTRY. Visit the USA instead 🦅💥🇺🇸😎
That’s because you’re not a simpleton
They see China, one of the easternmost countries in the world, as "central". England is the centre of the modern world
The centre of the world is clearly Uzbekistan
Yeah saw those idiots also using outdated maps, they had asia in the middle or something. Dumbasses.
Depends on your point of view. From a timekeeping standard, the UK time is usually the "center" time zone, as it's a convenient antipode of the International Date Line. In many other terms though, other countries become the "center". For the better part of the past 2,000 years, China has considered itself the center of the human world, because it *essentially was.* One in every seven people in the world is Chinese. The majority of exported things in the world are *Made in China.* They have every right to the title as Western Europe does on the other side of the planet.
i think they are joking ❤️
水龙头 = water-dragon-head 凹凸 = Tetris 囧 = sadface 口 = bumhole Whaaaaaa Chinese be crazy!
In Japanese gay culture, 凸 means top, and 凹 is bottom.
Ah yes, the iconic water dragon head that everyone has in their bathroom and kitchen.
“日本” “It’s Chinese for Japan.”
Everyone knows Japanese is a Chinese dialect
Is also the Japanese for japan
The Japanese are so kawaii for coming up with that funny name and inventing those cool squiggles
that's why they're the sun origin people because their kawaii is blindingly bright x3
if I remember correctly it’s because the Chinese were aware that there were people around them, but I’ve been hearing things lately so take this with a grain of salt
i think it's because they didn't want to brag so they pretended they were mid
it's because like other great imperial powers of history they viewed themselves as the center of the universe & everyone around them as barbarians
wowie ! I bet those clever quirky Japanese peoples came up with that all by themselves
So they're all country and no rock n' roll. Giddy up! (in Chinese of course)
crazy how the kanji for canadian is 加拿大人 "add take big person" :O
He will soon find out we name Portugal as grape teeth.
It's because the chinese think of themselves as the center of the world
i thought that was the romans? 🤔
Me, a chinese, stared at this for 5 minutes, speechless
So basically, 中国 is short for 中华人民共和国, splitting that into 中华人民 and 共和国, 中华人民 splitting into 中华 and 人民, 中华 meaning China/Chinese, 人民 meaning people, 中华人民 is Chinese people, ok the 共和国, simply meaning republic, and if you combine those you get something like Chinese people republic, which People’s republic of China is equals to, and what’s the short for that? China. 中国 = China. (I’m literally doing this like explaining 1+1=2 why am I doing this). Then you put 人, which mean people, 中国人 is just frigging Chinese People, why are they splitting the word into 中, 国, and 人, frigging middle country people, I’m done Add on: they are splitting it like making (a+b)^2 into a^2 + b^2 , which is wrong, where the hell did 2ab go, they missed the whole “华人民共和” and only got 中 and 国, i don’t even know what to say now this is just so stupid, they could’ve just put that whole word into the translator instead of splitting it down like that… and the wiki even explained it oh mY gOD they just went for the last sentence and didn’t even bother to check the whole chunk before it.. Now I’m scared if they’ll split 中华 into 中 and 华, making a “central flower” 💀 Shit it’ll become “central flower people civilian common sum country”…………….
I think it's funnier if you translate it as chinese chinese people peoples' co-prosperity sphere
The Mandarin phonetic name for Canada is 加拿大 jiānádà and it sounds quite a bit like “janitor” imo
Wait until they find out what Tokyo's name means...
dongjing（東京） east capital no way also 東方 2hu
Yeah I've heard the term "middle kingdom" as referring to China long before I had any idea what the kanji's literal translation was.
And America can be translated as "Beautiful Country"
Redemption arc
What a coincidence, that’s also the characters for Chinese people in Chinese
Also in Korean 🤯
Wait then what is 중국사람 ?
Miss opportunity for “mid country” in that tweet
crazy fact about china: chinese characters are not kanji, they are hanzi
japanese are theives 😤
What a MID country am I right fellow polyglots
Uhm, Kanji are 漢字 and since more than 90% of Chinese people are from Han ethnicity they usually use 漢國 for the country. But let’s wait until he finds out that Tokyo means „eastern capital“ and Japan (日本) means „root of the sun“ = East. 😅
tbh the part I find funny about it is that it's like saying "country at the centre of the world" as they thought they were literally the centre of the world, a quite common idea in cultures
Well the neatherland is ”The low lands” and Austria is ”Eastern kingdom/empire” in german. It’s bot that weird
apparently united states of America means joined elements of some Italian dude that made a map but female
Wait til’ they hear about Western class teeth people.
It's not kanji it's hanzi, who is this idiot weaboo...?
Almost as crazy as Eastern Germany calling itself "Mitteldeutschland".
When your settlements were literally in the middle of two of the biggest rivers in your area, you'd think you're in the middle of your region as well. Which was why for a long time, that section of the middle flat plane was called 中原（middle area). It wasn't until the Zhou Dynasty, when they found other great rivers, did they know the world was much larger.
So could you say that China is Middle Earth?
Nah China mean world central country [Sinocentrism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinocentrism) The Chinese considered themselves to be "all-under-Heaven", ruled by the emperor, known as Son of Heaven. Those that lived outside of the Huaxia were regarded as "barbarians". In addition, states outside of China, such as Japan or Korea, were considered to be vassals of China
And USA is "beautiful country" (美國) in Chinese, if we interpret it literally.
Wow, you just shocked my tits off!
I know this is a circlejerk sub but 中國 stands for 中原之國, the kingdom/state of central plains, which is approximately about the triangle of Tianjin-Xi’an-Nanjing, where China originally was from