First opened Monday, June 25, 2012
日本
にっぽん
Pitch accent: We don't have the data for this section. No accent list gives this spelling and reading, or the two we check against disagree.
Japan
Nippon is a phonetic variant of Nihon that keeps the p sound.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: Wiktionary's text for it doesn't give a split that spells the word and joins to its reading, and any other split would be a guess.
In a sentence
We don't have the data for this section. The pinned Tatoeba export has no sentence with a translation that uses this word and passes our filter.
What Wiktionary says
Quoted line by line from Wiktionary's Etymology section for this reading, taken from one dated dump so it can't change underneath us. Nothing below is paraphrased.
- “/nitɨpoɴ/ → /nip̚poɴ/”
- “Phonetic variant of Nihon above, maintaining the /p/ sound.”
Source: Wiktionary: 日本 (dump of 2026-09-02), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Reading, meaning and part of speech from JMdict, and kanji readings from KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).
Other readings of 日本 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not にっぽん. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
にほん
- “/nitɨpoɴ/ → /nip̚poɴ/ → /niɸoɴ/ → /nihoɴ/”
- “Coined in Japan of Sinic elements, as compound of 日 (nichi, “sun”) + 本 (hon, “origin”) and literally meaning "origin of the sun". The hon element was apparently pronounced /poɴ/ when first coined. Over time, the initial /p/ lenited, becoming /ɸ/ as shown in the Nifon entry in the 1603 Nippo Jisho ("Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary"). This then became the /h/ sound in modern Japanese.”
- “More information”
- “In older texts, this was read as kun'yomi as 日の本 (Hinomoto). The on'yomi readings Nippon and Nihon became more common in the Heian period, with both persisting into modern use. The Nihon reading appears to be the most common in everyday Japanese usage.”
- “This appellation comes from Prince Shōtoku's famous letter from Prince Shōtoku to Emperor Yang of Sui sent via the Japanese mission to Sui China in 607, wherein we see the first mention of Japan as the Land of the Rising Sun, and a description of China as Land of the Setting Sun:”
- “:”
- “日出處 (literally “sun + emerge + place”) here refers to Japan, while 日沒處 (literally “sun + sink + place”) refers to China. "Sun emerge place" both refers to the eastward position of Japan relative to China, and metaphorically places the Yamato Kingship during Empress Suiko's reign on a similar footing as to the Sui dynasty under Emperor Yang's rule.”
- “The earliest date for the specific spelling 日本 (literally “sun source”) instead of the periphrastic 日出處 (literally “sun emerge place”) may be 664, as mentioned in a fragment of the 733 text 海外国記 (Kaigai Kokki, “Record of Overseas Countries”), describing a letter given in 664 to a Tang emissary arriving in Dazaifu. However, it remains an open question whether this instance of 日本 might have been a change in name that happened between the actual event in 664 and the recording of that event in 733. More certainly, the Japanese source Shoku Nihongi relates that a 702 or 703 mission from Japan to the Tang court requested that the Chinese change the official name from 倭 (Wa) to 日本 (Nippon), and this appears to be corroborated by accounts in the Chinese source Old Book of Tang.”
- “Despite the spelling, the term may have been read out as the older name Yamato for some time afterwards, as suggested by kana glosses in sources such as the Man'yōshū poetry anthology of 759.”
- “Doublet of ジャパン (Japan).”
じっぽん
- “*/zitʉpon/ → /zip̚pon/ → /ʑip̚pon/”
- “Uses the kan'on reading jitsu for 日, as compared to the goon reading nichi. First appears in texts from the early 1600s, notably the 1603 Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo Jisho. Probably influenced by European-language terminology for the country, such as Portuguese Japão or Dutch Japan, in turn arising from Hokkien 日本 (Ji̍t-pún) via Malay Jepun, or from Teochew 日本 (rig⁸ bung²) via Indonesian Malay Jepang.”
What the labels mean
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.