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This was supposedly Marco Polo's word for Japan.  It has recently come back in vogue for films, games, etc.  It would seem that "Jipangu" (also spelled "Zipangu") is cognate with Jap. Nihonkoku / Nipponkoku, Ch. Rìběnguó 日本國, Kor. Ilbon-guk, Viet. Nhật Bản Quốc , but in none of the Chinese topolects I'm aware of does it sound quite like that.  Certainly it would not work for the southern or other topolects that have an entering tone final -k (or some -t) for the last of the three syllables.  Ditto for Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

Even the Sinitic topolects without an entering tone final don't have the right vowel shape / quality at the end to match the -u of Jipangu.

Maybe Marco Polo got it from Persian, the lingua franca of international diplomacy in his time.  Could it be that the phonotactics of Persian could not tolerate / represent any of the Sinitic topolectal forms of 國 directly but transformed one of them into something that sounded to Marco Polo like -gu?

Did Marco Polo get "Jipangu" from the Mongols?  If so, from whom did the Mongols get it?

Wiktionary entry for 日本國.

Wiktionary entry for 國.

James Unger

I think <Jipangu> is relatively recent.  The Polo version, seen on maps later, was <Cipangu>.  But that’s neither here nor there.  The problem is whether the final <gu> was meant to represent 國 or not.  Probably not, I’d guess.  The contemporary Indonesian and Portuguese were disyllabic, and I don’t think 日本國 became common until Meiji.  Italian lacks a velar nasal phoneme (though velar nasal allophones of /n/ no doubt occur due to assimilation), so I’d guess that the final <u> was just meant to signal that the preceding <ng> was a phonetic unit.  I suppose it’s possible that Yuan officials used an early Mandarin version of 日本國, which was the basis for Polo’s word, but you need to check with a Yuan period historian.

 It seems that modern Persian, at least, is close to French <Japon> (but no nasalization of the final vowel).  No extra vowel at the end.

 

Alexander Vovin

If I remember it correctly, Jipangu is from Old Malay. Modern Malay has Jepang.

Marcel Erdal

In the map of (11th century) Mahmûd (called Kâshgharî) Japan appears as J'YRQ', which Dankoff (and I think also others before him) have read Jâbarqâ, rightly emending the Y to B. Would this be the earliest appearance of 日本國 in alphabetical writing? The R can only be a misreading of N in Arabic writing if there was a word-final N, written by somebody who knew that guo was a separate word; or there could have been an intermediate spelling in Uyghur writing.

On this map the east is towards the top.The Y in the middle could also be a misreading of B plus the vowel i. That would give Jâbirqâ. The final vowel could attempt a representation of ô, since a W would rather be read as û.

By the way. could Marco Polo have been the first to put the vowel a into the first syllable of Cathay?


Mehmet Olmuz

Links for the world map from Kashghari:  here, here, and here
I was not sure about jaBarqa till Marcel wrote about that.
Middle of the top (or end of the world?) Japan.

Mahmud al Kashgari's map in Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk (Compendium of languages of the Turks) shows his geographical knowledge of the world as of 1072 AD. We see the original and a translation here.

Translation source: https://t.co/mPvEfDZ9eX
Original author: https://t.co/liv30P16Vd pic.twitter.com/3ZFtHr7Y1s

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) December 13, 2019

Mahmud Al-Kashgari's world map with the city of Balasagun in the center, one of the capitals of the Kara-Khanid Khanate.

(Mahmud ibn Hussayn ibn Muhammed al-Kashgari was an 11th-century Kara-Khanid scholar and lexicographer of the Turkic languages from Kashgar. Al-Kashgari studied the Turkic languages of his time and in Baghdad he composed the first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages, the Diwan Lughat al-Turk (Arabic: "Compendium of the languages of the Turks"). His book also included the first known map of the areas inhabited by Turkic peoples.

Source

    Mahmud Kashgari ibn Husayn ibn Muhammad was born in Kashi, China (short for Kashgar). His father, Husayn was the mayor of Barsgan, his mother, Bubi Rabiya Basri, was an intelligent woman. He studied Turkic dialects and wrote about them in Divanü Lügat-it-Türk in 1072. It was intended for use by the Caliphs of Baghdad, the new, Arabic allies of the Turks. He included the first known Turkish map in his book.

     The map is a map of the world, centered on the Turkish-speaking areas of Central Asia, the area on the border between Kyrghizstan and Xinjang province in China. The map is preserved in the Millet Genel Kütüphanesi (the General National Library), Istanbul.

     The colors are blue for rivers, green for seas, light yellow for deserts, red for mountains, and yellow for cities, countries, lands and peoples. The map is oriented with East at the top. The scale  is reduced as one gets nearer the edge of the map. A key to some of the places on the maps follows below. The key-map has been oriented with North at the top

A Key to some of the locations in the map

1. Bulgaria  2. Caspian Sea  3. Rus  4. Alexandria  5. Egypt  6. Tashkent  7. Japan (surrounded by water-the green semicircle  8. China-with water to the west  9. Balasaghun-the center of the world  10. Kashgar-Mahmud's birthplace  11. Samarkand  12. Iraq  13. Azerbaijan  14. Yemen  (15-18 Africa)  15. East Somalia  16. East Sahara  17. Ethiopia  18. North Somalia  (19-22 Indian subcontinent) 19. Indus  20. Hindustan  21. Ceylon and Adam's footprint  22. Kashmir  23. God and Magog  24. the world-encircling sea.

These and other locations and given in Albert Herrmann, "Die älteste türkische Weltkarte (1076 n. Chr.)," Imago Mundi I(1935)21-28.

The red mark on the south side of the map (21) identifies the location of the "footprint of Adam," Jebel Serandib, Adam's Peak, on the island of Ceylon, to which Adam was exiled after he was exiled from Paradise. Gog and Magog (23) are a nation and its ruler which represent an apocalyptic evil power, walled off from the world by a range of mountains.

     A more complete English key is available at: http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=406414956&size=o . Copy the url and paste it into your browser. 

Source

VHM:  I highly recommend taking a close look at Kashgari's map to get an idea of what the world looked like to an 11th-century educated man from the center of Eurasia.

A note on Balāsāḡūn, the center of the world in Kashgari's map, today:

Barskoon, Barskon or Barskaun, ancient Barsgan, Barskhan or Barsqan (Russian and Kyrgyz: Барскоон; Persian: بارسغان‎) is a settlement on the southern shore of Lake Issyk Kul in the Issyk-Kul Region of Kyrgyzstan. Its population was 6,912 in 2009. It is on the A363 highway between Bokonbayevo to the west and Kyzyl-Suu to the east.

Source

42°9′22″N 77°36′14″E

Another historically important nearby town with what appears to be the same name:

Balasagun was an ancient Sogdian city in modern-day Kyrgyzstan, located in the Chuy Valley between Bishkek and the Issyk-Kul.

Balasagun was founded by the Sogdians, a people of Iranian origin and the Sogdian language was still in use in this town until the 11th century.

Source

42°44′49″N 75°14′55″E

For a learned article on Balāsāḡūn by C[lifford] E[dmund] Bosworth, see Encyclopaedia Iranica here.  It begins:

BALĀSĀḠŪN, a town of Central Asia, in early Islamic times the main settlement of the region known as Yeti-su or Semirechye “the land of the seven rivers,” now coming mainly within the eastern part of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The exact site of Balāsāḡūn is uncertain. [VHM:  emphasis added]

 

Selected readings

• "Signs from Kashgar to Delhi" (10/11/13)
• "Pentalingual street signs in Kashgar" (7/11/12)
• "Kashgar Café Welcomes Big Noses" (8/9/10)
• "The geographical, archeological, genetic, and linguistic origins of Tocharian"

October 19, 2020 @ 11:19 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and geography, Language and history, Names, Tones

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