> 亜米利加【アメリカ】
>
> 伊太利亜【イタリア】
>
> 独逸【ドイツ】

I know these spellings are rarely used...

My question is: Why did they choose exactly these kanji characters for
spelling these countries' names?

Could they use other kanji characters but with same readings for spelling
these countries?
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kanji ateji
The logic behind kanji choice for country name ateji
**General phonetic "rules"**

For a lot of words that are now written using Katakana, there was a tiny
amount of logic to it. 亜 transcribed ア virtually exclusively, 伊 is a very
common kanji for transcribing イ, 加 for カ, 利 for リ, and generally the kanji
from which Katakana come is a good rule, though far from perfect (as noted
with ア, and in タ which is usually transcribed as 太 (origin of た)) [see image]
![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qPebR.png)

In fact, sometimes there aren't even consistent transcriptions for one word.
アラビア on my IME gives options of 亜拉毘亜 and 亜剌比亜, and even 阿剌比亞 (using the older
version of 亜). Nowadays katakana is standard. The website in the comments
section of the main post has a much larger list.

Syllables ending with -n tended to be transcribed by syllable (as opposed to
kana). 芬蘭 (フィンランド) is one example of this.

**Chinese's Influence**

Sometimes the transcription was a derivation of the hanzi used to transcribe
something in China. スペイン (西班牙) would by conventional logic be read as
"seibanga", with the most common respective readings of the characters being
せい、はん、and が. In fact, the origin comes from Chinese, where the word is read as
"Xibanya". Much closer to the pronunciation of "España" we're used to! The
Japanese word is スペイン, obviously a loan from English, but doesn't match these
characters much.

**Meaning**

Sometimes a fair few characters are possibilities, and the one chosen doesn't
follow any pattern above. One reason for this was the attempt to still keep
Kanji with some semantic (meaning) aspect to the word. フランス、スペイン are both
examples of this, with respective characters both containing 西（仏蘭西、西班牙）. This
makes the actual transcriptions generally quite messy.

**Other notes**

There are non-country names that got given kanji to transcribe sounds too,
including 缶{かん}, which was obsolete by the time the Dutch arrived in Japan, so
was revived to mean "can". 亜細亜 is common for "Asia" on wartime post stamps.
煙草{たばこ} is common, even today, in place of katakana for "tobacco" (both chosen
because of meaning purely, and have 0 phonetic relation to the word).

It's not common to write out entire words like this anymore, with katakana
largely replacing it. You'll see it every now and again, but much more
commonly these characters are still in frequent use in newspapers as
contractions of country names to keep headlines short. Headlines such as

> 独、伊決勝へ！"Germany and Italy advance to the finals" (say, in soccer)
>
> 米国大統領来日 "American President Comes to Japan" (all kanji)

are in the newspaper I have in front of me right now, for example.
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> _Why did they choose exactly these kanji characters for spelling these
> countries' names?_

It's hard to tell _exactly_ why, because these are mixture of various
transliterations done by Japanese and Chinese (of course different between
Mandarin or Cantonese or other dialects) speakers that happened to hear the
sound for the first time.

For example, there are some old school members which have been known for a
long time in fixed Chinese characters: 蒙古{モンゴル}, 西蔵{チベット}, 印度{インド}, 越南{ベトナム},
希臘{ギリシャ} (funnily the kanji are from endonym _Hellada_ but the reading is from
Portuguese _Grécia_ ), 埃及{エジプト} etc.

Modern (somewhat) systematic namings tend to choose those simple but not-
everyday-used characters: 伊 ("yond"), 亜 ("minor"), 尼 ("nun") etc.; or those
euphonious: 英 ("bright"), 利 ("advantage"), 蘭 ("orchid") etc. But there are
still many possible options. As you can see in [the WP
page](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%BD%E5%90%8D%E3%81%AE%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E8%A1%A8%E8%A8%98%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7#.E3.83.A8.E3.83.BC.E3.83.AD.E3.83.83.E3.83.91.E3.81.AE.E5.9B.BD.E3.80.85)
in @snailboat's comment above, there once was much more arbitrary
transliterations, most of which have been gradually thinned down by now.

Some other factors can influence kanji choice, too. 葡萄牙{ポルトガル} is thought to
contain 葡萄 ("grape") because its main export to Asia was wine. ロシア was
originally spelled **魯** 西亜 instead of **露** 西亜 until Russian embassy made a
complaint that 魯 could mean "obtuse".

> _Could they use other kanji characters but with same readings for spelling
> these countries?_

As for this, _definitely no_. They are already recognized as proper names that
you couldn't change them as you wish.
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On ​独逸 the kanji choice for Germany. It is not phonetic but ideological and
deliberately anti-German. This is in accord with the Chinese/East Asian 華夷思想
Huáyí Sīxiăng (J. Kai Shisô):Thought that the own culture is superior and
contempt of others regarded as 夷 ‘retarded Uncivilized’ or ‘animals’ (and
insects) below human beings (also 中華思想 Zhōnghuá Sīxiăng (J. Chûka Shisô):
Superior Land In The Middle Ideology). Including the 犭 beast classifier here
is not just the otherwise often relatively harmless pride for the culture of
one’s own realm, but the deliberate despite of others as beasts. Understanding
this is a matter of study of East Asian thought. As this is quite
embarrassing, Japanese will usually avoid admitting this. Certainly, diplomats
of the German-speaking countries and their counterparts should work towards a
decent naming.
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