Self-Respect Self-Esteem in Chinese / Japanese...

zì zūn

jison

자존

自尊 means self-respect or self-esteem in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. It can also mean "pride in oneself."

Note: Japanese sometimes put the character for heart after these two. However, this two-character word is universal between all three languages (which is often better since more than a third of the world's population can read this version as a native word).

zì zūn

chi juen

jison

자존

自尊 can mean "pride," "self-respect" or "self-esteem." The first character means "oneself" and the second can mean revered, valuable, precious, noble, exalted, honorable or simply "pride."

I have also seen this two-character word translated as "amour propre," self-regard, and self-pride.

自尊 is universal between Chinese, Japanese Kanji, and Korean Hanja written languages. It may also be understood in old Vietnamese (they once used Chinese characters as well).

dōng fāng zì zūn

dung fong chi juen

tou hou zi son

동방자존

東方自尊 is the most universal way to write "Asian Pride."

We worked on this one for a long time. The effort involved both Chinese and Japanese translators and lengthy discussions. If you have been searching for this term, there is a reason that it's hard to find the way to write "Asian Pride" in Chinese and Japanese - it's because of the inherent difficulties in figuring out a universal combination of characters that can be read in all languages that use forms of Chinese characters.

This final solution that you see to the left creates a reasonable title in Chinese, and an exotic (perhaps unusual) title in Japanese (This could be read as "Eastern Self-Respect" in Japanese").
Although not as natural, it does have the same meaning in Korean Hanja and the older-generation of Vietnamese people will be able to read it too.

The first two characters literally mean "Oriental" and the second two mean "pride," "self-esteem," or "self-respect" (we chose the most non-arrogant way to say "pride"). If you have "Asian Pride" (sometimes spelled Asian Pryde) these are the characters for you.

Note: For those of you that wonder, there is nothing technically wrong with the word "Oriental." It is a correct word, and any bad meanings were created by so-called "Asian Americans" and Caucasians in the United States. To say "Asian" would not completely correct to the intended meaning, since that would include people from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, India, and portions of Russia.

For further proof, if you were of East Asian ancestry and born in England, you would be known as a "British Oriental" (The "Oriental stigma" is basically an American creation and, therefore, applies mostly to the American English language - where they get a bit overzealous with political correctness).

Further, since the Chinese and Japanese word for Oriental is not English, it can not be construed having ill-meaning. One trip to China or Japan, and you will find many things titled with these two characters such as malls, buildings, and business names. These places also use "Oriental" as their English title (much as we do, since our Chinese business name starts with these same two characters).

In short, the first two character have the meaning that Americans attach to "Asian" but is more technically correct.