china

A country of eastern Asia. Its ancient civilization traditionally dates to c. 2700 b.c. . Beijing is the capital and Shanghai the largest city. Population, 1.295 billion.
Our term china for porcelain or ceramic ware is a shortening of chinaware and probably china dishes. Although the word china is identical in spelling to the name of the country, there are 16th- and 17th-century spellings like chiney, cheny, and cheney that reflect the borrowing into English of the Persian term for this porcelain, chºº.} The Persian word and the Sanskrit word cº³¡,} “Chinese people,” which gave us the English name for the country, go back to the Chinese word Qin, the name of the dynasty that ruled China from 221 to 206 b.c.