Japan definitely chose it themselves. Before, the country was known as 倭国, with 倭 meaning something like harmonic but also submissive. Obviously one Tennō wasn't too happy about that and began signing letters to the Chinese court as "from the ruler of the land where the sun rises (日本) to the ruler of the land where the sun sets." So Japan became the "Land of the rising sun" (well literally it's the "sun's origin").

'Holland' as some use for 'the Netherlands' is a bit of a pars pro toto as Holland is a province of the Netherlands. Is just the most well known part, and more easier pronounce with one/two syllables (depending on how well you're articulating).

Thanks for the etymology btw I was curious about it when I read the op.

I Remember a decade ago i read a post on blogpost on exactly this

I wasted thirty minutes to search but I didn't find it, but it was something like Michael Jackson was shocked to learn during his First tour in mainland china that the locals gave him the Hanzi 迈克尔·杰克逊 where the last character means "inferior" or something like that, instead in Taiwan the locals chose 麦可·杰克森 which has a better meaning.

The characters for Japan literally mean sun and origin. And has been in use since the 8th century. So the Mercator projection has nothing to do with that. The origin of "land of the rising sun" is because Japan is East of China and the sun rises in the east.

There are Mercator projection maps with the Americas in the center and Japan on the left edge of the map.

Most maps, regardless of projection used, cut the world through the pacific because there’s barely any land. World maps centering the Americas cut through Central Asia, making them less practical for many applications.

All map projections try to flatten a curved surface. That only works with cuts and distortions. They are all trade-offs between conserving area, angles, shapes, distances. It’s impossible to to all of that.

Which sort of makes sense since the US has always had a huge agricultural / grain surplus.

米国 is because of ateji, not agriculture. 米 is the second character of 亜米利加 -- an old transliteration of "a-me-ri-ka" as kanji. 亜 is the shorthand for Asia (亜細亜); the second character 米 is used as the shorthand for America. 米 is both the country (USA) and the continents -- e.g. 北米 and 南米 are sometimes used for North and South America, respectively, while 米軍 is the US military.

Katakana has mostly replaced kanji transliteration of foreign words in modern Japanese, but some uses like the 米 shorthand persist.

I think and the US is 米国 meaning rice country.

Lmfao, pretty sure that's also the Chinese Nationalists' internet term for it

Literally my mind just go straight to 瑞士糖 (the first 2 characters, 瑞士, is Switzerland), so a place with a lot of candy

That its in the middle of the world... which doesn't exactly make sense once I started realizing the fact that the Earth is round, so there is not really a "center" like a hypothetical flat earth would have.

They just picked some characters that sound like 'Canada'. It probably means something nonsensical like Greedy Purple Turtle

Xenophobic is a bit much. These names were mostly probably formed out of ignorance, and once a name is established it's hard to change.

Hi everyone, I'm from the great nation known as the Central Nation (中国, China) of Asia, known officially as, the Central Hua-People's Republic (中 华人民 共和国, PRC)

🤣

Actually that kinds sound a bit "Ancient" and cooler.

Or do I use the Pinyin pronunciation instead of translating?

Hi everyone, I'm from Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó. (Good luck pronouncing that with the tones correct 😉)

Interesting thought

I don't think the other nations are too bothered by it in most cases.

The country that comes to mind first is Germany. They call it Deutschland. I never looked into why we as English speakers call it "Germany". I just do it because everyone else does.

I haven't heard of Germans getting upset about it. If they were legitimately offended, I'd start calling it Deutschland, no problem.

The real issues come in when there's a historical context. Like, if the name contains a slur for the people in that nation. Or if you mix up the names of neighbouring Balkan countries.

It's been changing a bit with British English in a few places. I remember when the Netherlands was more commonly referred to as Holland, which is no longer that common at all anymore.

Netherlands isn't exact with the native name being Nederlands and is instead more of a "sound-a-like" translation as if we had it spelled in it's native way you know the lamen would instead just call it the Nedderlands.

Afaik, some characters do have meanings but are sometimes used for their readings, so their literal meaning is gibberish.

保 — to protect — bǎo

加 — to add — jiā

利 — benefit, profit — lì

亚 — Asia / secondary — yà

I think this is part of why some people end up with weird gibberish tattoos when they translate things literally, because some made up alphabets try to map Western letters to some Chinese characters, but it doesn't work that way.