where does the name of china come from
Names of China The names of China include the many contemporary and historical appellations given in various languages for the East Asian country known as Zhongguo (中國/中国) in its official language. China, the name in English for the country, was derived from Portuguese in the 16th century, and became popular in the mid 19th century.[1] It is believed to be a borrowing from Middle Persian, and some have traced it further back to Sanskrit. It is also generally thought that the ultimate source of the name China is the Chinese word "Qin" (Chinese: 秦), the name of the dynasty that unified China but also existed as a state for many centuries prior. There are however other alternative suggestions for the origin of the word.
History of China The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC,[1][2] from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC).[3] Ancient historical texts such as the Records of the Grand Historian (c. 100 BC) and the Bamboo Annals (296 BC) describe a Xia dynasty (c. 2070–1600 BC) before the Shang, but no writing is known from the period, and Shang writings do not indicate the existence of the Xia.[3][4] The Shang ruled in the Yellow River valley, which is commonly held to be the cradle of Chinese civilization. However, Neolithic civilizations originated at various cultural centers along both the Yellow River and Yangtze River. These Yellow River and Yangtze civilizations arose millennia before the Shang. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest civilizations,[5] and is regarded as one of the cradles of civilization.[6]