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> **Possible Duplicate:**  
>  [How did "little tsu" become a
> lengthener?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/751/how-did-
> little-tsu-become-a-lengthener)

On Wikipedia and elsewhere, Japan is written like so: Nippon ( にっぽん ).

What is that tsu doing in there? Why isn't it represented in the romaji
rendering of the name?
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hiragana names
Why is there a "tsu" in Nippon (にっぽん)?
The つ character you're talking about is commonly referred to as "little つ" and
looks like っ. This characters is not actually pronounced, but rather it means
to take a small pause.

In the case of にっぽん, instead of pronouncing it as "nitsupon", you would be
pronouncing it like "ni [small pause] pon" which is romanised as "nippon"
which has a natural pause between the two 'p's.

But like sawa said in a comment, this is a very basic thing in Japanese and
you would have learnt this from a textbook's first chapter.

For a more complete explanation though, you can visit [the wikipedia page on
it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokuon).
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> On Wikipedia and elsewhere, Japan is written like so: Nippon ( にっぽん ). What
> is that tsu doing in there?

The chiisai-tsu (small tsu) should be covered by any basic hiragana book, a
good alternative is [wikipedia's hiragana
article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana). From the writing section:

> A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is
> geminated (doubled). For example, compare さか saka "hill" with さっか sakka
> "author". It also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it
> denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ! ([iteʔ] Ouch!). However, it cannot be
> used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants – to double
> them, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable.

"Doubled consonant" is probably not the most straightforward way to describe
it, but in general you can think of a
[sokuon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokuon) introducing a slight pause
before continuing with the next kana sound.

* * *

> Why isn't it represented in the romaji rendering of the name?

It actually is, that's what the doubled 'pp' represents in that particular
romaji system. [The various romaji
systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese) are often
contradictory with each other, but most of them use this doubling-consonant
system to represent a っ.
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