パン

Portuguese pão, from Latin panis, is the source of Japanese パン in most dictionaries. Priberam defines pão as food made from cereal flour dough baked in an oven. Japanese Wiktionary places the borrowing in the Azuchi-Momoyama period, when Portuguese missionaries and traders brought wheat bread and Christian food terms into Japan. The spelling パン later became standard, while rare kanji forms include 麺麭 and 麪包. The borrowing predates the heavy Meiji flow of English food words. It entered through Portuguese contact rather than through English bread, and it joined other Nanban terms such as カステラ, ボーロ, and コンペイトウ. In Japan, the meaning widened from European-style bread to a large bakery category. By the modern period, compounds such as 食パン, あんパン, クリームパン, フランスパン, ロールパン, 乾パン, and パン粉 made パン a daily food word in shops and homes. Today パン can mean bread, buns, and many bakery items that English might not call bread. Portuguese pão is closer to bread as a staple loaf or roll, while Japanese パン includes sweet filled products and convenience-store items. Bakery signs also use パン屋 for the shop and パン職人 for bakers. A simple example is 朝はパンを食べる. English bread translates many cases, but it does not explain the Japanese sound.