The story
- Mandarin · derived from班長 /班长“team leader”
- English todayhoncho
From Japanese 班(はん)長(ちょう) (hanchō, “squad leader”), from 19th c. Mandarin 班長 /班长 (bānzhǎng, “team leader”). Probably entered English during World War II: many apocryphal stories describe American soldiers hearing Japanese prisoners-of-war refer to their lieutenants as hanchō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.