Fun with Japanese Company Names
For some reason, studying the etymologies of Japanese company names is fascinating to me. Like how the founder of Canon got the name for his company from the Bodhisattva Kannon, a kind of Goddess of Mercy revered by Japanese Buddhists, or how the name Epson was formed from "Son of Electric Printer." When you study Japanese, you start to see these famous brands in a new light, for example watchmaker Seiko is written with characters meaning "delicate and minute engineering," while Nikon is an abbreviation of Nihon Kogaku ("Japan Optical"). Yakult got their name from the Esperanto word for yogurt, which was suggested by a Polish researcher working with the company at the time, and Subaru is the local name for the Pleiades star cluster, deemed fitting as the company was formed by merging six smaller companies together. Bandai's name is rather complex: it comes from Bandai Fueki, one of the books in Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and the phrase means "forever unchanging," since children's toys should be something that are constant throughout the ages. A lot of Japanese company names have the word ya at the end, such as toy maker Kotobukiya or the bookstore chain Kinokuniya. This is a character meaning "roof" which is used to denote a shop, like hana-ya (a flower shop) or ramen-ya (a ramen shop) in addition to being part of various proper names. There's a new sporting goods store that just opened in our city called Himaraya, which is great since it fits the standard Japanese naming practice yet makes you think of the mighty Himalayas. Their official company slogan is pretty cool, by the way: "We have a fine dream."
And in case you don't know what a Bodhisattva Kannon is, our neighboring city of Takasaki just happens to have a giant (as in 5-story) statue of the goddess, which I'll show you.
posted by Peter in Japan at 8:07 PM
6 Comments:
It's funny that Epson is a japanese company name, it seemed so domestic to me. Nikon originally was an upstart company of Mitsubishi's.They(Mitsubishi) have a policy of making new companies or ventures survive under a different name for twenty years or so before that company can carry the Mitsubishi name. Nikon's name did so well they stuck with it I guess.BTW that statue is amazing!! It's kind of sad that the West is such a young culture, because sometimes I feel we are deprived of such remarkable monuments as these(unless you count Mt. Rushmore, but as I recall the Native Americans aren't too happy about that one).
9:48 PM
Yes, the statue is cool. It's a local landmark, if you ever get lost in Takasaki look for the giant Buddha to guide you in the right direction. There are tons of love hotels along the road up there, I guess that makes sense since it's pretty at night, and thus a "date spot." It was built in 1936, so it's not that old, but it's really unique.
11:55 PM
Incidentally, giving Google's Chrome a whirl now. While the way it renders text is PC-awful (please...if you're using a PC now, try to spend an hour on a Mac with Safari before buying your next computer...), it's zippy. Considering the problems they have getting software to utilize multiple processor cores, the tab-as-OS-process idea seems totally obvious, I don't know why Microsoft or Apple didn't think of it.
1:03 AM
having become rather proficient in japanese myself, i found myself back in india over the summer a couple of years ago, watching tv with my sister (who also happens to speak japanese) when an old advert re-ran for tv-sets by a company that used to be very big in india a decade ago, one of the first electronics multinationals to enter india infact, Onida. the advert was typical Onida, with their trademark demon appealing the new product. Almost at once both my sister and I jumped pointed at the screen yelling 鬼だ！ (oni da - meaning, it's a demon!) and continued to stay amused for hours wondering how we never made the connection before...
6:44 PM
heh, that's cool, although sometimes it can be something slightly different. I remember "realizing" that the name Ricoh (the copier company) was the Japanese word for smart (利口). But when I read up on it, it turned out to be some abbreviation of a longer kanji name that just had the same pronunciation. Still, the association helped me learn the word when I was in college.
11:21 PM
Wow, I didn't realize how close our field trip bus got to J-List last weekend! That statue dropped the jaws of a whole bus of American college students on our way back from Kanazawa.
3:43 PM
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