Why is Brazilian (person) written as 伯人？白人 is what you would expect for “white person”, but the Kanji used for Brazilian is different

9 comments

1. Brazil is represented by 伯剌西爾 or 伯刺西爾 in Ateji

   So by extension, a Brazilian person is 伯人

   伯 also doesn’t have anything to do with “white” or “whiteness”

2. Some country names have a kanji version.

   And that kanji you wrote is part of kanji version of ブラジル aka 伯剌西爾

   Edit: those kanjis (Ateji) are used only for the sound and the meaning should not be taken into much consideration.

3. Interesting that you’d immediately assume it has anything to do with race. 伯 comes from 伯剌西爾, which is the ateji version of ブラジル. There are tons of abbreviations like this, for example:

   – 独 from 独逸（ドイツ）
   – 仏 from 仏蘭西（フランス）
   – 米 from 亜米利加（アメリカ）
   – 英 from 英吉利（イギリス）
   – 露 from 露西亜（ロシア）

   [Wikipedia has an entire article about this](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/外国地名および国名の漢字表記一覧#国名)

4. I think you’re thinking about this too hard…

   白 means “white”

   伯 means “Brazil”

   Just because they have 白 in common, doesn’t mean they have the same meaning.

   了 and 子 mean two entirely different things but look extremely similar.

5. It’s just how it is. But if I had to explain it, it might be to just “diffrentrate” the kanji. Kinda like how there’s different kanji for kami. Since they could’ve really put 髪 as god or even paper but that’s just my two cents. As long as you know that kanji means Brazilian person, then it’s good.

6. With 伯 the 白 component has nothing to do with its meaning but denotes its pronunciation ハク. This is fairly common in Kanji. Take 精, 清, 情, 晴, 請. Many of them have nothing to do with the colour blue (青) but they all have either セイ, ショウ or variations like ジョウ as their 音読み.

7. Is it also read as hakujin? Would you ever use this word conversationally, or just burajirujin? That would be very confusing

8. Country kanji are mainly used for institutional and political things more than anything.

   I’ll use the American example because it’s more common and chances are you’ll see it in newspapers, etc.

   日米関係 Japanese-US relations

   米軍 American army

   欧米 “the west”

   米英戦争 America v UK war (I’m not American or British so the name in English doesn’t come to mind right away)

9. Fwiw it’s more likely someone would say ブラジル人. If one said ハクジン out of context, the listener would immediately assume you meant 白人.