Japanese exonyms are the names of places in the Japanese language that differ from the name given in the place's dominant language. While Japanese names of places that are not derived from the Chinese language generally tend to represent the endonym or the English exonym as phonetically accurately as possible, the Japanese terms for some place names are obscured, either because the name was borrowed from another language or because of some other obscure etymology, such as referring to England as イギリス, which is based on the Portuguese term for "English", Inglês. Exonyms for cities outside of the East Asian cultural sphere tend to be more phonetically accurate to their endonyms than the English exonyms if the endonym is not an English name. The names for nations and cities that existed before major Japanese orthographic reforms in the Meiji era usually have ateji, or kanji characters used solely to represent pronunciation. However, the use of ateji today has become far less common, as katakana has largely taken over the role of phonetically representing words of non-Sino-Japanese origin. As significant differences exist between the pronunciations of the Chinese and Japanese languages, many of the ateji terms for the exonyms of foreign, non-Sinitic terms are unrecognizable in Chinese, and likewise, since some of the ateji terms derived from Chinese, the aforementioned terms do not match the Japanese on or kun readings for the pronunciation of the given kanji.
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Cambodia
Canada
China
For endonyms derived from the Chinese language, Japanese typically uses the Chinese-derived term and maintains the same meaning and/or kanji of the endonym, albeit with a Japanese version of the pronunciation, or an approximate pronunciation of a historical English exonym if the city is internationally well-known. The exonyms above can also be written in katakana. One detail to be noted, however, is that for the names of certain districts or areas in Hong Kong, the pronunciations of the Japanese endonyms typically try to imitate the Cantonese pronunciation, instead of the Japanese on readings or the Mandarin pronunciation.
Czech Republic
Egypt
France
Germany
Greece
India
Since India is home to many different languages and English is an official language in the country, Japanese exonyms are largely based on the English exonyms. The English exonyms are also familiar to many Indians.
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japanese exonyms for Italian place names are generally based on the Italian pronunciation rather than English exonyms.
While most South Korean place names are derived from words in the Chinese language, Japanese can refer to a Korean place name using Japanese on readings, Japanese kun readings, or a pronunciation that imitates the Korean endonym name as closely as possible. Many place names in Korea have at least two of the pronunciations, the first being based on the Japanese on or kun reading and the second being based on the Korean endonym, with the latter being made so that the Japanese could navigate and ask for directions more clearly to native Koreans.
