[Kanji_The_Wanderer]

Originally Posted by anrakushi

as for your point about people calling your country a name you understand in your language, my question is what does it matter? if they are talking to you they will use English and therefore call countries by their English name. a Chinese person is not going to call America 美国 "mei guo" when speaking English. Just like when i speak Japanese to Japanese people I say
日本 "nihon" so you would never have to worry about what other people call your country in their own language unless you speak it also.

That's not what I mean. It doesn't matter at all. I am just curious to know where the word "Japan" came from if the Japanese people themselves did not make such a name. If it was made by outsiders due to a mistake then that is fine, I have just always wanted to know where the word Japan came from if it is not a word they use.

I never studied language as you can see so I don't know how other countries operate. I didn't really know that countries have certain names for others. I thought they called them by what they really were...