Wa (name of Japan)

This article is about the ancient name of Japan. For the Japanese concept usually translated as harmony, see Wa (Japanese culture). For the Japanese character, see Wa (kana). For the noun particle in Japanese grammar, see Japanese grammar § Topic, theme, and subject: は wa and が ga.

Wa
Chinese character for Wō or Wa, formed by the "person" radical 亻and a wěi or wa 委 phonetic element
Chinese name
Chinese倭
Literal meaningsubmissive, distant, dwarf
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyinwō
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese/ʔuɑ/
Old Chinese
Zhengzhang/*qoːl/
Korean name
Hangul왜
Hanja倭
Literal meaningdwarf
Transcriptions
Revised Romanizationwae
McCune–Reischauerwae
Japanese name
Kanji倭 / 和
Kanaわ
Transcriptions
Revised Hepburnwa

Wa is the oldest attested name of Japan and ethnonym of the Japanese people. From c. the 2nd century AD Chinese and Korean scribes used the Chinese character 倭; 'submissive'', ''distant'', ''dwarf' to refer to the various inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, although it might have been just used to transcribe the phonetic value of a Japonic ethnonym with a respectively differing semantic connotation. In the 8th century, the Japanese started using the character 和, wa, 'harmony', 'peace', 'balance' instead due to the offensive nature of the former.

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