{"id":7031,"date":"2025-05-05T23:17:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T14:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/?p=7031"},"modified":"2025-05-05T23:20:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T14:20:04","slug":"why-is-the-united-states-called-%e7%b1%b3%e5%9b%bd-beikoku-in-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/?p=7031","title":{"rendered":"Why is the United States called \u201c\u7c73\u56fd\u201d (Beikoku) in Japanese?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The kanji \u201c\u7c73\u56fd\u201d literally means \u201cRice Country,\u201d which might seem confusing. But here\u2019s the real reason:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"rtoc-1\"  class=\"wp-block-heading\">1.\u00a0Kanji Abbreviations for Foreign Countries<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Japanese often uses kanji abbreviations for country names, especially based on Chinese transliterations. These are usually made by picking one representative character from the longer transliterated name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The full old transliteration of \u201cAmerica\u201d in kanbun (Classical Chinese) was \u4e9c\u7c73\u5229\u52a0 (A-me-ri-ka).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>From that, the character \u7c73 (bei) was chosen to represent \u201cAmerica.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u4e9c\u7c73\u5229\u52a0 \u2192 shortened to \u7c73\u56fd (\u201cCountry of \u7c73\u201d)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This kind of shortening is common. Examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u82f1\u56fd (UK) \u2192 from \u82f1\u5409\u5229 (Eikoku for \u201cEngland\u201d)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u4ecf\u56fd (France) \u2192 from \u4ecf\u862d\u897f (Furansu)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u72ec\u56fd (Germany) \u2192 from \u72ec\u9038 (Doitsu)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"rtoc-2\"  class=\"wp-block-heading\">2.\u00a0Why \u7c73?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The character \u7c73 was not chosen because of its meaning (\u201crice\u201d) but because it phonetically matches the \u201cme\u201d sound in America. In historical transliteration:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u201cAmerica\u201d \u2192 Ame-ri-ka \u2192 \u4e9c\u7c73\u5229\u52a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>So \u7c73 represents the \u201cme\u201d part of the name.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"rtoc-3\"  class=\"wp-block-heading\">Summary:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u7c73\u56fd (Beikoku) = \u201cUnited States of America\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u7c73 is from the old transliteration \u4e9c\u7c73\u5229\u52a0 (America).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It\u2019s a phonetic abbreviation, not related to rice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The kanji \u201c\u7c73\u56fd\u201d literally means \u201cRice Country,\u201d which might seem confusing. But here\u2019s the real reaso &#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-qa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7032,"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7031\/revisions\/7032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedom777.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}