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Why is ローマ字 spelt without an ン?

As far as I can tell, it's not because you can't have an ん sound before a じ
sound, because 漢字 has an ん sound before 字.

Did early Europeans' term for Roman letters not use the letter "n"?

Also, does the ローマ in ローマ字 refer to the Roman empire whose language influenced
the script used in many European languages, or did it refer to the main
headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, the religion of the Portuguese?

**Background** : I want to know the etymology for the word ローマ字 so that the
next time someone misspells the English word
[romaji](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/romaji) (derived from the Japanese word
ローマ字) as "romanji", I can not only say that the English word should be spelt
"romaji", but I can explain why it's spelt that way. And the more detailed and
authoritative the explanation of "ローマ字"'s etymology is, the more likely it is
to be remembered.
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2013-01-05T12:31:51.560
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etymology orthography
Why is ローマ字 spelt without an ン?
ローマ字 is ローマ plus 字【じ】. It's a noun+noun compound, just like 漢字【かんじ】 or
アメリカ人【じん】.

It is **not** the English adjective _Roman_ plus 字, so there's no reason for
an ン to be there.

Writing _romanji_ is a common beginner's mistake. There isn't really any
linguistic significance to it, and you should avoid making this mistake
yourself.

* * *

The Japanese place name ローマ is ultimately borrowed from the Latin _Roma_.

How did it make its way into Japanese? Dictionaries don't say, and it's not
really relevant to your question, but I'll try to answer anyway. My guess is
that it was borrowed into Japanese via Portuguese in the 1500s, [when
Portuguese missionaries first arrived in
Japan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Roman_Catholicism_in_Japan).
There's also speculation on
[Wiktionary](http://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E) that
it might have been via Spanish.
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2013-01-05T13:23:41.757
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To tell the truth, this question was so unexpected for me who am not familiar
with colloquial English that I couldn't figure out what it means if it weren't
for an English speaker's guidance. Maybe I still don't grasp what you're
asking, but there are so many reasons it couldn't be with ン.

  1. **"Roman" in Japanese**

In English, _Roman_ is an adjective derives from Rome. Japanese has a word ロマン
too, but it's from
[French](http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/roman/69755), where it
means English _romance_. Moreover, now we use it especially for "an emotional
attraction or aura belonging to an especially heroic era, adventure, or
activity" ([Merriam-Webster](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/romance)) sense. This word is associated with
"romanticism" and has little to do with the city Rome, so it can be said that
English _Roman_ and Japanese ロマン are [false
friends](http://www.google.co.jp/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFalse_friend&ei=NS9cVdeQLaLUmAWR6YCoDA&usg=AFQjCNH-
HHhWEUWeuyn0RvpQC2oZ9zQF5w&bvm=bv.93756505,d.dGY) you cannot use them
interchangeably for Rome Roman.

Strictly speaking, there's another word ローマン from English _Roman_ , but usage
of this one is confined to a few technical jargon like ローマン体 "roman type" (↔
or _italic_ ) in typography or グレコローマンスタイル in wrestling.

  2. **How did Japanese know Rome and its alphabet**

It appears to be Christian missionaries that introduced the knowledge about
the city. 日本国語大辞典 cites its first appearance in 1605.

> ＊妙貞問答〔１６０５〕下「イタリヤの内、 **朗磨** と云都に本寺を立て」  
>  "they built the cathedral in a city in Italy, called **Rome** , ..."

[The author](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Fucan) of this tract is
educated with Latin in a official Jesuit seminary in Japan, so perhaps it
could be direct transliteration from medieval Latin _Rōma_. Anyway, the Latin,
Italian, Spanish and Portuguese pronunciations of this city had little
difference at that time.

The name of letters they used was, however, not known besides in a very vague
term throughout the Edo period: "the horizontal writing".

> ＊俚言集覧〔１７９７頃〕「横文字。西洋の国四十二国みなよこ文字のかななりといへり。左より書はじめ右におはる。草のつるの如く書てよみがたし」  
>  "Sideways letters: All 42 Western countries are said to write in sideways
> phonetic letters. It starts in left and ends in right. Written like plant
> vines that hard to read."

The solid term ローマ字 wasn't attested until Meiji. Again the first appearance
is:

> ＊羅馬字早学び〔１８８５〕〈矢田部良吉〉一「 **羅馬字** 即ち横文字は、二十六字にて」  
>  " **Roman alphabet** i.e. the sideways letters consists of 26 letters..."

Originally ローマ字 stood for general notion of "Roman alphabet", parallel to 漢字
("Chinese character") or 梵字 ("Siddham script"). The etymology is quite
transparent, from ローマ "Rome" + 字 "writing".

Later, its usage was gradually limited within the discussion on Japanese
orthography reform, eventually became a word means "romanization" or more
specifically "Japanese romanization", but that wasn't the original meaning.
Today we usually call the writing system itself as ラテン文字 ("Latin script") or
just アルファベット.

  3. **Why not adjective?**

If someone's still not convinced, then it's grammar time. It is true that
European languages, including English, use adjective forms when describing an
idea "something _from somewhere_ ". But in Japanese, you **have to** use bare
place name in this situation, especially when the entire train of words
represent a monolithic idea.

In fact, many English words are created in this way too, like "stun gun", "ice
cream" or "summer time". But when it comes to locations or personal names, we
revive adjectives and say "Central European Summer Time". What Japanese does
is just to remove "-al" and "-an"s completely, and we get 中央ヨーロッパ夏時間 (lit.
"center Europe summer time"). Similarly, we only say ローマ帝国 ("Roman Empire"),
ローマ市民 ("Roman citizen"), ローマ文明 ("Roman civilization") or ローマ教会 ("Roman
church"), but never *ローマン帝国 or *ローマン教会 (of course not *ローマ的帝国 etc.) otherwise
it'll obscure the relationship between its base word ローマ.

It's not just because we've traditionally called them so, but works as well in
new words: an imaginary extraterrestrial intelligent development in a dwarf
planet, "[Cererian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_\(dwarf_planet\))
civilization", would likewise be translated as ケレス文明. Thus, if we call the
city ローマ, then the Roman alphabet would be automatically called ローマ字.

Using Japanese adjectives (though [they don't work exactly as European
adjectives](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/1016)) or genitives to
qualify nouns is not prohibited, but it breaks the integrity of idea all-noun
compounds have. ローマの帝国 would only indicate " _a_ Roman empire" (cf. ローマの休日
_Roman Holiday_ ) but not " _the_ Roman Empire" (which existed in 27 BC – 476
AD).
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