Japanese exonyms

Okay kiddo, do you know what a name is? It's a word we use to call someone or something by, right? Like how we call you by your name.

Just like how we have names for people and things, countries also have names. But did you know that sometimes, people in other countries use different names for those countries?

For example, the country we call Japan, people in Japan call it Nihon or Nippon. That's an exonym! An exonym is a name that people in one country use to refer to another country or place.

Sometimes, exonyms come from the language of the people who originally discovered or interacted with that country. So maybe a long time ago, when people first started traveling to Japan, they heard the people there call their country Nihon, and they started using that word too.

But some exonyms are not so easy to explain. For example, in Portuguese, Japan is called Japão. That's a very different word from Nihon or Nippon, right? It's because the Portuguese language has its own rules and sounds, and they came up with Japão based on those rules.

So basically, exonyms are just different names for countries that people in other countries use. It's like having a nickname, but for a whole country!