The characters are arbitrary and based on pronunciation. About the only rule is they’ll try to avoid characters with insulting meanings.
印 = in, 度 = do, so ‘Indo’.
As far as I know, this usage of Kanji based purely on their sound is called Ateji and it’s pretty common. In this case, both Kanji together spell “Indo”, which is the word for “India’ in Japanese.
I’ll explain with another weird one, 北米 is north America
Now why is that even?
アメリカ
亜米利加
Basically those four kanji make the sound: あ＋め＋り＋か
But they have NOTHING to do with America. 亜 means Asia. And 米 means rice. Speaking of rice, we don’t eat as much rice in America as in Asia. But ironically we get represented by the 米 kanji.
Confusing? Well let’s make it *more* confusing.
They abbreviated it. to just 米. Because the abbreviation for Asia is already 亜 so you can’t use that one, so let’s pick the next one.
This is why, you say “Kanji is hard” and then people are like “no it’s easy” and you have to be like, “no…it’s hard.”
this one comes from chinese (tang dynasty, so like ~600-900 ce). at one point in the far past it sounded like how some other country referred to india (probably not anybody in india themselves, they didnt call where they lived anything that sounded like in-du).
lots of old place names west of japan come from the chinese transliteration of that name (which used characters based on sound — oftentimes the characters would have negative meaning when referring to a group of outsiders, not the case here i believe). some are obsolete now and have been katakana-ised, but if youre curious about usually archaic names you can look to chinese.
… and then there’s the archaic 天竺 (てんじく) as another word for India, which is apparently from
* Sindhu (सिन्धु), in Sanskrit, which was the name of the Indus River * 𐏃𐎡𐎯𐎢𐏁 (hinduš) in Old Persian (“people living beyond the Indus”) * 天竺 /*qʰl’iːn tuɡ/ as a phonetic transcription of hinduš in Old Chinese (first known usage in 111 AD) * 天竺 /tʰen ʈɨuk̚/ in Middle Chinese * 天竺 as てんじく in Japanese
So, 天竺・てんじく for India is a morphed phonetic transcription of “hindus”, ultimately the same origin as the English “India”, but it’s pretty tough to see any relation at all, even with an explanation.
The 米 in 米国 ( beikoku) doesn’t really refer to rice, but is used as an abbreviation of 亜米利加 which is simply read as “amerika” i.e. USA. Its phonetical and you shouldn’t read into any more than that. You might wonder, why not use katakana or hiragana then? Because history. Get into linguistic if you are really curious I guess. It wont really help you learn Japanese though tbh. Observe how language is used, rather than why.
Simply put, Kanji are sometimes used strictly for their pronunciation, called ateji. 印度 is one such example. If you knew their reading you would instantly recognize why it was used that way, rather than ponder what its meaning is because its clearly nonsense.
This ateji are usually not used when referring to country name but the abbreviation are very often used like 日米条約 (us/japan treaty) 日露戦争 (japanese russia war ). I don’t have specific one for India but association Japan/India is 日印協会.
当て字 aside, why do you have a problem with 印度 yet appear to have no issue with the USA being “rice country”?
There is a wikipedia article about your question that might be interesting to you
On a related note, would anyone happen to know why Japan settled on **米**, **米**国, and 亜**米**利加 for “America” when China, Korea, and Vietnam all used **美**/**美**國/亞**美**利加. Wiktionary says they aren’t homophones in Middle Chinese, modern Mandarin, or Cantonese either, though they are homophones in Korean.
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The characters are arbitrary and based on pronunciation. About the only rule is they’ll try to avoid characters with insulting meanings.
印 = in, 度 = do, so ‘Indo’.
As far as I know, this usage of Kanji based purely on their sound is called Ateji and it’s pretty common. In this case, both Kanji together spell “Indo”, which is the word for “India’ in Japanese.
I’ll explain with another weird one, 北米 is north America
Now why is that even?
アメリカ
亜米利加
Basically those four kanji make the sound: あ＋め＋り＋か
But they have NOTHING to do with America. 亜 means Asia. And 米 means rice. Speaking of rice, we don’t eat as much rice in America as in Asia. But ironically we get represented by the 米 kanji.
Confusing? Well let’s make it *more* confusing.
They abbreviated it. to just 米. Because the abbreviation for Asia is already 亜 so you can’t use that one, so let’s pick the next one.
This is why, you say “Kanji is hard” and then people are like “no it’s easy” and you have to be like, “no…it’s hard.”
this one comes from chinese (tang dynasty, so like ~600-900 ce). at one point in the far past it sounded like how some other country referred to india (probably not anybody in india themselves, they didnt call where they lived anything that sounded like in-du).
lots of old place names west of japan come from the chinese transliteration of that name (which used characters based on sound — oftentimes the characters would have negative meaning when referring to a group of outsiders, not the case here i believe). some are obsolete now and have been katakana-ised, but if youre curious about usually archaic names you can look to chinese.
… and then there’s the archaic 天竺 (てんじく) as another word for India, which is apparently from
* Sindhu (सिन्धु), in Sanskrit, which was the name of the Indus River
* 𐏃𐎡𐎯𐎢𐏁 (hinduš) in Old Persian (“people living beyond the Indus”)
* 天竺 /*qʰl’iːn tuɡ/ as a phonetic transcription of hinduš in Old Chinese (first known usage in 111 AD)
* 天竺 /tʰen ʈɨuk̚/ in Middle Chinese
* 天竺 as てんじく in Japanese
So, 天竺・てんじく for India is a morphed phonetic transcription of “hindus”, ultimately the same origin as the English “India”, but it’s pretty tough to see any relation at all, even with an explanation.
source: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E7%AB%BA](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E7%AB%BA) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianzhu_(India)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianzhu_(India))
Ateji
The 米 in 米国 ( beikoku) doesn’t really refer to rice, but is used as an abbreviation of 亜米利加 which is simply read as “amerika” i.e. USA. Its phonetical and you shouldn’t read into any more than that. You might wonder, why not use katakana or hiragana then? Because history. Get into linguistic if you are really curious I guess. It wont really help you learn Japanese though tbh. Observe how language is used, rather than why.
Simply put, Kanji are sometimes used strictly for their pronunciation, called ateji. 印度 is one such example. If you knew their reading you would instantly recognize why it was used that way, rather than ponder what its meaning is because its clearly nonsense.
This ateji are usually not used when referring to country name but the abbreviation are very often used like 日米条約 (us/japan treaty) 日露戦争 (japanese russia war ). I don’t have specific one for India but association Japan/India is 日印協会.
当て字 aside, why do you have a problem with 印度 yet appear to have no issue with the USA being “rice country”?
There is a wikipedia article about your question that might be interesting to you
https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/外国地名および国名の漢字表記一覧
Meanwhile, France is a Buddhist county. 仏国
On a related note, would anyone happen to know why Japan settled on **米**, **米**国, and 亜**米**利加 for “America” when China, Korea, and Vietnam all used **美**/**美**國/亞**美**利加. Wiktionary says they aren’t homophones in Middle Chinese, modern Mandarin, or Cantonese either, though they are homophones in Korean.