Why is a blackboard called 黒板, but a whiteboard is not called 白板?

Question

I'm curious as to why Japanese uses a 外来語 for whiteboard ホワイトボード, but a native word for blackboard, 黒板. Is there a historical reason this emerged? If you called a whiteboard a 白板{はくばん}, would people understand you or would they laugh at you and think you were strange?

Answer 1

This mainly depends on when these concepts were imported to Japan. Words introduced to Japan before WWII (e.g. 水素, 野球, 飛行機) tend to have kanji names, while recent ones (e.g. イリジウム, ラグビー, ヘリコプター) tend to have katakana names. Although some kanji words may be gradually replaced by new katakana versions, most words will remain the same after it was introduced for the first time.

• Is there a defined cause for the recent rise in the popularity of gairaigo?
• What is the rule in assigning kanji to a new word?
• What are the origins of the Chinese derived words?

白板 doesn't sound funny and Wikipedia says it's another name for ホワイトボード. Although people will probably understand when you say it, it's still fairly uncommon.