The names of China include the many contemporary and historical designations given in various languages for the East Asian country known as Zhōngguó (中国; 中國; 'Central State', 'Middle Kingdom') in Standard Chinese, a form based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.

This developed into the usage of the Warring States period, when, other than the cultural community, it could be the geopolitical area of Chinese civilization, equivalent to Jiuzhou.

[9] Although Zhongguo could be used before the Song dynasty period to mean the trans-dynastic Chinese culture or civilization to which Chinese people belonged, it was in the Song dynasty that writers used Zhongguo as a term to describe the trans-dynastic entity with different dynastic names over time but having a set territory and defined by common ancestry, culture, and language.

Writers of the Ming period in particular used the term as a political tool to express opposition to expansionist policies that incorporated foreigners into the empire.

[21] In contrast, foreign conquerors typically avoided discussions of Zhongguo and instead defined membership in their empires to include both Han and non-Han peoples.

[38] The geography textbooks published in the late Qing period gave detailed descriptions of China's regional position and territorial space.

[41] Mark Elliott noted that it was under the Qing that "China" transformed into a definition of referring to lands where the "state claimed sovereignty" rather than only the Central Plains area and its people by the end of the 18th century.

[43] William T. Rowe wrote that the name "China" (中華; 中國) was apparently understood to refer to the political realm of the Han Chinese during the Ming dynasty, and this understanding persisted among the Han Chinese into the early Qing dynasty, and the understanding was also shared by Aisin Gioro rulers before the Ming–Qing transition.

[44] Joseph W. Esherick noted that while the Qing Emperors governed frontier non-Han areas in a different, separate system under the Lifanyuan and kept them separate from Han areas and administration, it was the Manchu Qing Emperors who expanded the definition of Zhongguo and made it "flexible" by using that term to refer to the entire Empire and using that term to other countries in diplomatic correspondence, while some Han Chinese subjects criticized their usage of the term and the Han literati Wei Yuan used Zhongguo only to refer to the seventeen provinces of China and three provinces of the east (Manchuria), excluding other frontier areas.

The Chinese representatives believed that Zhongguo (China) as a country name equivalent to "Great Qing" could naturally be used internationally, which could not be changed.

[57] During the late Qing dynasty, various textbooks with the name "Chinese history" (中國歷史) had emerged by the early 20th century.

[citation needed] During the Warring States (475–221 BCE), the self-awareness of the Huaxia identity developed and took hold in ancient China.

The use of this term is also common as part of the idiom Jiāngshān shèjì (江山社稷; 'rivers and mountains', 'soil and grain'), in a suggestion of the need to implement good governance.

Some people also attribute this word to the mythical hero and king Yu the Great, who, in the legend, divided China into nine provinces during his reign.

[74] Chinatowns worldwide, often dominated by Southern Chinese, also became referred to as Tang People's Street (唐人街, Cantonese: Tong-yan-gaai; pinyin: Tángrénjiē).

[75][76] This refers to how the Han people crossing the Taiwan Strait in the 17th and 18th centuries were mostly men, and that many of their offspring would be through intermarriage with Taiwanese aborigine women.

中華 (Chunghwa) is a term that pertains to "China", while 民國 (Minkuo), literally "People's State" or "Peopledom", stands for "republic"..[79][80] The name stems from the party manifesto of Tongmenghui in 1905, which says the four goals of the Chinese revolution were "to expel the Manchu rulers, to revive Chunghwa, to establish a Republic, and to distribute land equally among the people.

In addition, the ROC, due to pressure from the PRC, uses the name "Chinese Taipei" (中華台北) whenever it participates in international forums or most sporting events such as the Olympic Games.

[81] To avoid confusion, the Chen Shui-ban led DPP administration began to add "Taiwan" next to the nation's official name since 2005.

[94] Another suggestion, made by Geoff Wade, is that the Cīnāh in Sanskrit texts refers to an ancient kingdom centered in present-day Guizhou, called Yelang, in the south Tibeto-Burman highlands.

Sīnae was an ancient Greek and Roman name for some people who dwelt south of Serica in the eastern extremity of the habitable world.

[86] There are other opinions on its etymology: Henry Yule thought that this term may have come to Europe through the Arabs, who made the China of the farther east into Sin, and perhaps sometimes into Thin.

[100] 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 Sinae and Thinae of Ptolemy.

[86][101] Marcian of Heraclea, a condenser of Ptolemy, tells us that the "nations of the Sinae lie at the extremity of the habitable world, and adjoin the eastern Terra incognita".

[86][103] In Genesis 10:17, a tribes called the "Sinites" were said to be the descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham, but they are usually considered to be a different people, probably from the northern part of Lebanon.

[107] In English and in several other European languages, the name "Cathay" was used in the translations of the adventures of Marco Polo, which used this word for northern China.

The word Tabgach came from the metatheses of Tuoba (*t'akbat), a dominant tribe of the Xianbei and the surname of the Northern Wei emperors in the 5th century before sinicisation.

The word Manzi reached the Western world as Mangi (as used by Marco Polo), which is a name commonly found on medieval maps.

[114][115] Some early scholars believed Mangi to be a corruption of the Persian Machin (ماچين) and Arabic Māṣīn (ماصين), which may be a mistake as these two forms are derived from the Sanskrit Maha Chin meaning Great China.

[120] The name for China in Chinese Sign Language is performed by trailing the tip of one's fingertip horizontally across the upper end of the chest, from the non-dominant side to the dominant one, and then vertically downwards.