It’s because of the way country names were put in kanji. For example, France was written as 仏蘭西.
I’m curious if there were any cheeky Kanji choices when it came to countries L0L.
My knowledge here is that it is mostly related to the phonetics behind the Kanji not the character meanings themselves per se
Countries tend to have a traditional name, which is simply an arbitrary concept assigned to them such as “rice” or “orchid” or “buddha” in this case, and a name that is based on the pronunciation.
For instance:
– France is indeed “buddha” [仏] – The Netherlands is “orchid” [蘭] – Portugal is “grape” [葡] – England is “hero” [英] – Germany is “single” [独] And so forth.
Arbitrarily assigned because of the pronunciation. There’s no association between France and Buddhism here.
I always like to joke about how, Japanese people often make this big fuss over rice or how they think it’s somehow unique and that nobody in “gaikoku” eats rice or whatever, yet America is 米国 (rice country) haha
A statue of Buddha is called 仏像 ぶつぞう so yeh, like others have said it’s just due to the pronunciation being similar.
So someone recently made me aware of [Project EGG](https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/) which is sort of a Japanese equivalent to…
7 comments
It’s because of the way country names were put in kanji. For example, France was written as 仏蘭西.
I’m curious if there were any cheeky Kanji choices when it came to countries L0L.
My knowledge here is that it is mostly related to the phonetics behind the Kanji not the character meanings themselves per se
Countries tend to have a traditional name, which is simply an arbitrary concept assigned to them such as “rice” or “orchid” or “buddha” in this case, and a name that is based on the pronunciation.
For instance:
– France is indeed “buddha” [仏]
– The Netherlands is “orchid” [蘭]
– Portugal is “grape” [葡]
– England is “hero” [英]
– Germany is “single” [独]
And so forth.
Arbitrarily assigned because of the pronunciation. There’s no association between France and Buddhism here.
I always like to joke about how, Japanese people often make this big fuss over rice or how they think it’s somehow unique and that nobody in “gaikoku” eats rice or whatever, yet America is 米国 (rice country) haha
A statue of Buddha is called 仏像 ぶつぞう so yeh, like others have said it’s just due to the pronunciation being similar.
The UK is written 英国 but hell, I’m no angel.