Chinese exonyms

When a foreign place name, or toponym, occurs in Chinese text, the problem arises of spelling it in Chinese characters, given the limited phonetics and restrictive phonology of Mandarin Chinese, and the possible meaning of those characters when treated as Chinese words. For example:

• "London Heathrow Airport" is usually rendered in Chinese text as 倫敦希斯路機場 (Lúndūn Xīsīlù Jīchǎng), with the English pronunciation of 'London' being fairly accurate, and of 'Heathrow' being less accurate: in Chinese literally this means "kinship, honest" (for London), "hope/rare, given/this, road" (for Heathrow), "aircraft, field", with the last syllable of "Heathrow" rendered as "lu" although the more accurate "lo" and "lou" are known Chinese words.

Names of foreign nations are sometimes shortened to their first character when used in compounds. For example, the name for Russia in Chinese is 俄罗斯 (Éluósī), but the name of the Russian language is 俄语 (Éyǔ), anything Russian-style is 俄式 (Éshì), and the Russian military is 俄军 (Éjūn).

For Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese names, the Chinese exonym is often the Chinese pronunciation of the Korean hanja, Japanese kanji, or ancient Vietnamese Chữ Nôm writing of the toponym. In some cases, especially in Japan, the Chinese pronunciation may be completely unlike the native-language pronunciation.

Countries had been founded or had gained independence after 1949 (the year Kuomintang had exiled to Taiwan after losing to the Communist Party) often have different exonyms used in mainland China (PRC) and Taiwan due to differences in official standards resulting from the split in government. Exonyms used in mainland China are written in simplified Chinese on this page, and exonyms used in Taiwan are written in traditional Chinese. The exception to this are exonyms for Japanese and Korean place names, which will be written in traditional Chinese.

Additionally, if the country's endonym is not internationally well-known, Chinese will transcribe the English name into Chinese characters.