Thought this would be an easy one to Google but my Google-fu is failing.
Do the Chinese have special terminology when it comes to WWII? During the war they had probably one of the worst times of all nations involved as the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War and eventually the Second World War overlapped. Do the Chinese see these conflicts as separate as we do in the west, part of one big clusterfuck or something else?
They call it the anti-Japanese war, and sometimes refer to “the global war against fascism” in formal settings.
I think most refer to it simply as the Second World War (Di er tsi si jieh da zhan.) Some may call it the Second Sino-Japanese War still, but I think that might be more of a historian’s term.
By going to the Wikipedia article on World War II, scrolling down the list of other languages the article is available in, and clicking on the one for Chinese, I find the title of the article is given as 第二次世界大战, which Google Translate says is pronounced “Dì èr cì shìjiè dàzhàn” and means “Second World War”. The article starts with a few alternate names:
第二次世界大戰（又常被簡稱為二次大戰、二戰等，亦可稱為世界反法西斯戰爭）
Google Translate renders this as “World War II (also often referred to as the Second World War, the Second World War, is also known as the World Anti-Fascist War)”. The last character in the bit before the parentheses, according to Google Translate, has the same meaning and pronunciation as its counterpart in the title.
I note the process by which I found the name so that it can be taken with as many grains of salt as are necessary. On a subject this well-known, I expect Wikipedia to be decently reliable, though whether regular Chinese people have a different colloquial name they use in casual speech, I am not in a position to know.
I can’t read any Chinese as such, but from my studies of Japanese I can confirm that 第二次世界大戰 is, with yet another variation in the shape of the final character, the same set of characters used in Japanese, where it’s pronounced “Dai-ni-ji sekai taisen”. (第二次世界大戦) The characters mean “Second World War”, or, slightly more literally, “Number 2 in Sequence World Great War”.
Here’s part of Wikipedia’s entry regarding the name:
In the Chinese language, the war is most commonly known as the War of Resistance Against Japan (simplified Chinese: 抗日战争; traditional Chinese: 抗日戰爭), and also known as the Eight Years’ War of Resistance (simplified Chinese: 八年抗战; traditional Chinese: 八年抗戰), simply War of Resistance (simplified Chinese: 抗战; traditional Chinese: 抗戰), or Second Sino-Japanese War (simplified Chinese: 第二次中日战争; traditional Chinese: 第二次中日戰爭).
It was total war between China & Japan from 1937 to 1945 (i.e. the end of WWII) but Japan had been continuously conquering and occupying more & more of the Asian mainland since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895.
Wasn’t China as occupied with internal warfare as much as external in that era?
The next-to-last character in the second sequence of Japanese characters looks like one of those used in the Japanese name for Japan. Is there any connection?
The Japanese name for Japan is 日本 (“Nihon” or, with increasing obsolescence, “Nippon”), which essentially means “origin of the sun”. No connection to 大, which by itself means “big”.
Having grown up in Taiwan*, I’ve always heard it colloquially called 二次世界大戰 (second big world war) without the unnecessary first character, 第, which just means “number” – like the difference between WW2 and WW No. 2. Or even more commonly in everyday speech, just 二次大戰 (second big war).
*which was more or less the same country back then, I believe, except that the Japanese were a lot better towards the islanders.
It’s probably just what Verily said: 大 looks like 本, but they have different meanings. Etymologically 大 (big) comes from 人 (person), maybe with their hands stretched wide. And 本 (this, self, origin, root) comes from the pictogram for trees, so 日本 is literally “sun origin” or Land of the Rising Sun.
As an aside, though, Japan has had many names, including 大和 (Yamato), basically the ancient moniker “Great Japan” in the manner of Great Britain.
And to break it down literally:
第=Number
二=Two
次=(to signify a 2nd occurrence, as opposed to 2nd place or whatever)
世界=world
大=big
戰=battle/war
If you are referring to the character ”大”, it was used in the name 大日本帝国, (Dai Nippon Teikoku) which was used as the official name of Japan from the time of the Meiji Constitution (1889) to shortly after the Second World War.
The name literally means “Empire of Great Japan” depending on how you want to phrase it in English (the last two characters “Teikoku” are the ones that mean “Empire”) ; I don’t know, but I would guess whoever picked this name was probably influenced by the name of “Great Britain” and tried to create the same effect in Japanese.
You can still find some companies with “Dainippon”/“Dai Nippon” in their names, and some American movies and books from the period may refer to Japan as “Dainippon,” sometimes with an undertone of derision.
There is visual resemblance but they’re totally different words. The only difference visually is that one had a small horizontal bar on the vertical column (kind of like the difference between **l **and t.)
Thanks for the replies, I know so little about the Chinese experience in WWII it’s embarrassing.
So am I correct in thinking that the war that concerned them they called the War of Resistance Against Japan that had been going on since '37 and the rest of the business against Germany and the other Axis powers the Second World War? After all September 1st 1939 meant bugger all in China. Do they see the two ‘merging’ into one conflict after Pearl Harbor?
Do who see? Wasn’t Japan part of the Axis?
Not at the start of the war, no.
Your typical man on the street is very rarely going to use the term second world war, it’s not used much either colloquially or in official government documents. The only place it would appear would be in documents that specifically address the global war that includes the European theater. e.g. A Chinese man whose grandfather fought the Japanese isn’t going to refer to him as a veteran of the second world war, but a veteran of the war against Japanese aggression. Whereas presumably an American probably will use “World War 2” and not “the war for the restoration of the French Republic and the Kingdom of Belgium”. I think this is what you are asking.
I have never seen “second Sino-Japanese war” used anywhere outside of weird English-speaking internet forums. It sounds like something that was translated directly from Japanese, maybe that’s where it is used but I don’t know.
I read that the Russians call World War II “The Great Patriotic War.” What did they call World War I? (Printable names only, please.)