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.
Chinese whispers Historians trace Westerners' use of the word Chinese to denote "confusion" and "incomprehensibility" to the earliest contacts between Europeans and Chinese people in the 17th century, and attribute it to Europeans' inability to understand China's culture and worldview.[4] Using the phrase "Chinese whispers" suggested a belief that the Chinese language itself is not understandable.[5] The more fundamental metonymic use of the name of a foreign language to represent a broader class of situations involving foreign languages or difficulty of understanding a language is also captured in older idioms, such as "It's all Greek to me".