The word for Japan in Japanese is にほん.  (Or にっぽん)  に means sun and ほん means root.  So, にほん means "origin of the sun"  thus Japan is also known as the "Land of the Rising Sun."

There are several words for 'person' in Japanese.  ひと is the noun 'person.'  If you wanted to say "Who is that person?" you would say "あのひとはだれですか。"  あの means 'that over there.'  (This will be discussed more in Lesson 4.)  Likewise, one says おんなのひと for 'woman' and おとこのひと for 'man.'  These mean 'female person' and 'male person' and are much more polite than just saying おんな or おとこ which sound insulting alone.

The other two ways of indicating people are the suffixes -にん and -じん. Adding the suffix -じん to the name of a country makes the name of the nationality of that country. にほんじん means 'Japanese person.'  We will discuss the use of -にん later. 

Similarly, one can add the suffix -ご to the end of a country word and it becomes the language of the country.  Note that there are exceptions to this as some countries share common languages.

Country

People

Lesson 3 Vocabulary:

にほん

Japan