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The different usages of China in world languages generally derives from two sources, according to how knowledge of China reached the culture, whether by:
The fact that there exists several different conceptions of what China is in the first place also complicates the situation. For example, Chinese people carefully make the distinction between China proper inhabited by ethnic Han Chinese, or what is often referred to simply as "Chinese" outside of China, and China, which also includes Tibetans, Uighurs, Zhuang, Yanbianese Koreans, Mongols, and Manchus, and many other ethnic groups. On the other hand, many others, especially those advocating independence or greater autonomy for Tibet and other non-Han Chinese regions, tend to equate China with China proper.
In modern China, the term Zhongguo is used to refer to all of China, including China proper, Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. By contrast, Han refers to the Han Chinese ethnic group, who are mostly concentrated in China proper, Manchuria, and only parts of the other 3 regions. There is no general Chinese term for just China proper, or just the territories inhabited by Han Chinese.
Zhonghua is a more literary term used synonymously with Zhongguo; it appears in the official names of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. Tang is used synonymously with Han among southern Chinese, though some restrict the term further to refer to just Cantonese or some other south Chinese language group.
Middle Kingdom (中國/中国 pinyin: zhōngguó) in Mandarin
The Chinese traditionally positioned the emperor of China at the center of the world, conceiving concentric rings that extends from the cultural center to barbarlic borderlands. This notion was accepted in Korea, Vietnam and other countries to some degree, but not in the "northwestern crescent" that includes Mongolia, Turkestan and Tibet. They did not have terms to refer to this concept in the first place. The ROC and PRC impose it on them either by literal translation or transliteration.
Middle Prosperity (中華/中华 pinyin: zhōnghuá) in Mandarin, originally referred to the culturally rich Henan.
The name Han (漢/汉 pinyin: hàn) comes from the Han Dynasty, who presided over China's first golden age. During the Sixteen Kingdoms and Northern and Southern Dynasties periods, various non-Chinese ethnic groups invaded from the north and conquered North China, which they held for several centuries. It was during this period that people began to use the term "Han" to refer to the natives of North China, who (unlike the invaders) were the descendants of the subjects of the Han Dynasty.
Today the term Han Chinese is used by the People's Republic of China to refer to the most populous of the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups of China. "Han Chinese" is simply referred to as "Chinese" outside China, especially among advocates of independence for non-Han Chinese regions.
The name Tang (唐 pinyin: táng, Cantonese: tong4) comes from the Tang Dynasty, who presided over one of China's golden ages. It was during the Tang Dynasty that South China was finally and fully Sinicized; hence it is usually South Chinese who refer to themselves as "Tang". For example, Chinatowns worldwide are usually dominantly Cantonese; they are hence referred to generally as Tongyankai (唐人街 pinyin: tángrénjiē), or "Street of Tang People". The name Tongsau (唐手) (a form of martial arts similar to karate) also originates from the same source. Cantonese people may also use Tang to refer exclusively to Cantonese themselves.
Names used in Asia, especially East and Southeast Asia are usually derived directly from words in a language of China learned through the land-route. Those languages belong to a former dependency (tributary) or Chinese-influenced country have especially similar pronunciation with those of Chinese. Those used in European languages have indirect names that came via the sea-route and bear little resemblance to what is used in China.
From Chinese Manzi (southern barbarians). The long-lasting division of China weakened the dogma that China should be unified, and it became common to call the North and the South by different names. While Northern China was called Cathay, Southern China was referred to as Mangi. Manzi often appears in documents of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. The Chinese often label non-Chinese as "barbarian," but at that time they were called barbarian by the Mongol conquerors. The Mongols also called Southern Chinese "Nangkiyas" or "Nangkiyad", which were derived from Nanjing, the southern base of the Chinese. As Marco Polo used it, the word "Manzi" reached to the Western world as "Mangi".
This group of names derives from Khitan, an ethnic group that originated in Manchuria and conquered Northern China. Due to long domination of Northern China by these non-Chinese conquerors, it was considered by northwestern people as the land of the Khitan. In English and in several other European languages, the name "Cathay" became widely used largely as a result of English translations of the adventures of Marco Polo, which used this word for China.
There is no evidence that either in the 13th or 14th century, Cathayans, i.e. Chinese, travelled officially to Europe, but it is possible that some did, in unofficial capacity, at least in the 13th century. For, during the campaigns of Hulagu (the grandson of Genghis Khan) in Persia (1256-65), and the reigns of his successors, Chinese engineers were employed on the banks of the Tigris, and Chinese astrologers and physicians could be consulted at Tabriz. Many diplomatic communications passed between the Hulaguid Ilkhans and the Christian princes. The former, as the great khan's liegemen, still received from him their seals of state; and two of their letters which survive in the archives of France exhibit the vermilion impressions of those seals in Chinese characters -- perhaps affording the earliest specimen of those character which reached western Europe.
"Tabgach" came from the metatheses of "Tuoba" (*takbat), a dominant tribe of the Xianbei. It referred to Northern China, which was dominated by half-Xianbei, half-Chinese people.
From Sanskrit Cin, possibly derives from the name of the Qin Empire (2nd century BC).
Marco Polo described China specifically as Chin, which is the word used in Persian, the main lingua franca on his route. Barbosa (1516) and Hindi: Cheen
A name possibly of origin separate from "Chin"
The name probably came to Europe through the Arabs, who made the China of the farther east into Sin, and perhaps sometimes into Thin. Hence the Thin of the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, who appears to be the first extant writer to employ the name in this form; hence also the Sinæ and Thinae of Ptolemy.
Some denied that the Sinæ of Ptolemy really represented the Chinese. But if we compare the statement of Marcianus of Heraclea (a mere condenser of Ptolemy), when he tells us that the "nations of the Sinae lie at the extremity of the habitable world, and adjoin the eastern Terra Incognita," with that of Cosmas, who says, in speaking of Tzinista, a name of which no one can question the application to China, that "beyond this there is neither habitation nor navigation" -- we cannot doubt the same region to be meant by both. The fundamental error of Ptolemy's conception of the back formation from serikos (σηρικος), "made of silk", from sêr (σηρ), "silkworm," in which case Seres is "the land where silk comes from."
Manchu: nikan
Tibetan: rgya nag
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