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What is the longest (based on their representation in romaji) word in Japanese? Are there any longer than リュウグウノオトヒメノモトユイノキリハズシ? If it depends on criteria for a word, then list them by their criteria.

Background: I'm wanting to use a long word for a JRuby bug report, and I think that floccinaucinihilipilification is pretty worthless. Wikipedia's article on Longest words (by language) is currently lacking an entry for Japanese.

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  • Isn't this the sort of thing that could be answered with a trivial perl/ruby script and the EDICT file?
    – jkerian
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 4:17
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    Quote: 植物では、アマモの別名をリュウグウノオトヒメノモトユイノキリハズシ（竜宮の乙姫の元結の切り外し）といい、現在標準的に使われていないものではあるが、最も長い和名とされる。 Link: ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
    – Dono
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 4:19
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    Define "word" in Japanese. (good luck) Also: if katakana is allowed, I can generate "words" of pretty much any length you want. Take any technical English phrase (or even chemical compound name) with a use in Japanese, transliterate it and there you go.
    – Dave
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 5:11
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    "floccinaucinihilipilification is pretty worthless." - I assume the irony was deliberate.
    – Tim
    Commented Nov 17, 2012 at 10:44
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    Most of the listings here as the longest word in Japanese are simply ‘made up for fun’ kind of combinations of well-established words. You must understand if the connecting ‘particle’ ‘no’ is used in the combination, then it’s a combinations of nouns. One word has to be ‘inseparable’, therefore it is ‘one’ word. Each meaningful part has to be ‘dependent’ to other parts if it is considered as one piece. Anyway, ‘just made-up’ kind of names, such as the name of a boy in Rakugo story, would be meaningless to mention. All of us should search a combination which is inseparable and still point one t
    – Yoshi Satoh
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 4:36

5 Answers 5

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Well, I found the following question which includes some pretty long words/names:

  1. タウマタファカタンギハンガコアウアウオタマテアポカイフェヌアキタナタフ
  2. 愛知県海部郡飛島村大字飛島新田字竹之郷ヨタレ南ノ割
  3. ランヴァイル・プルグウィンギル・ゴゲリフウィルンドロブル・ランティシリオゴゴゴホ

And a site with some more (though it's based on kanji): Long 1-kanji words

sorry for not linking, not enough rep...

According to the link you gave リュウグウノオトヒメノモトユイノキリハズシ is a name of a sea weed, compromised of more then one word, so I guess some of the stuff here pass...

Edit: The Japanese wiki page for really long words have some more really long words like 英国国教会の廃止に反対する主義. it's one word in English ("antidisestablishmentarian-ism"), but I'm not sure it can be considered as such in japanese.

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    英国国教会の廃止に反対する主義 is definitely not one word in Japanese
    – ssb
    Commented Nov 14, 2012 at 10:49
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One can always recursively create infinitely long Japanese verbs by sticking on agglutinative markers:

食べられられられられられられられられ...られる

おいしくなくなくなくなくなくなくなく...ない

連れていってきていってきていってきて...いく

Obviously they don't mean anything useful but since phrases like he is going to go to go to go to go or it is not not not not not not bad is one word in Japan word length is theoretically unbounded.

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    Note that he is going to going to going to going to going to go is ungrammatical in English. (I'm not qualified to make grammaticality judgements about the Japanese, but 〜られられられる looks questionable... I wonder if anyone else has an opinion about the Japanese constructions in your answer.)
    – user1478
    Commented Aug 8, 2013 at 16:22
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    I know the difference between syntax and semantics. It's syntactically invalid because of the second going. Compare *I am going to walking to the store, which is likewise ungrammatical. The sentence is already finite (tensed) with the first verb, so the second needs to be a to-infinitive. Your sentence should read he is going to go to go to go to go to go to go.
    – user1478
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 1:45
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    That depends on whether you consider Japanese an agglutinative language with a fixed number and order of agglutinative slots. japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1712/…
    – dainichi
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 6:56
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    Japanese is clearly agglutinative with respect to the verbs.
    – ithisa
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 10:56
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    @snailboat, while certainly not part of everyday conversation, constructions like ～なくなくなくない are possible in that they appear in jokes occasionally.
    – Mark S.
    Commented Mar 30, 2014 at 4:23
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My friend, when teaching Japanese in English, found out about a long verb, "arawaresasewaremashta" in an old book. It means "the river spontaneously appeared", but I'm not sure if it is still used.

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One of the cast name of the traditional Japanese comedy　落語：

じゅげむじゅげむごこうのすりきれかいじゃりすいぎょのすいぎょうまつうんらいまつふうらいまつくうねるところにすむところやぶらこうじのやぶこうじぱいぽぱいぽぱいぽのしゅーりんがんしゅーりんがんのぐーりんだいぐーりんだいのぽんぽこぴーのぽんぽこなーのちょうきゅうめいのちょうすけ

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This is probably the longest word I found in the Kanji application Kanji Tree. It describes the phase "no use to cry over spilled milk"

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