Apparently it is Portuguese traders that are responsible for the eventual English exonym "Japan".Endovelico wrote:As the story goes, when British prisoners of war were punished for calling Japanese "Japs", they resorted to calling them "Nips", and that seemed to be alright... at least for a while...monster_gardener wrote:Perhaps simply that Japanese people consider it offensive..... Perhaps something like calling a Black person a "nigger/nigga" even though "nigger" is simply a corruption of the Spanish word for the color black........What does "Jap" mean which could be considered equally offensive?
The [official] Japanese name for Japan is 日本 pronounced as "Nippon", hence the origin of the pejorative "Nips".
I recall meeting a Western colleague outside his hotel in Kyoto one chilly morning during rush hour to head off to a conference.
By way of conversation, as we joined the crush of commuters going to work, he commented on the weather that "It's a bit nippy out today."
He then realized the double meaning of what he had just said and looked at me in horror of having offended.
I looked at him, then at all the people hurrying about us, and doubled over with laughter.
Anyways, ethnic/religious/class/racial pejoratives have no place here.
Anyone who has a need to use them can, I'm sure, find another place on the internet to post.
