The History Of Car Names

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[NameExplain]

Suggest a topic for next Monday's video!

[fermintenava]

Speaking of cars named after their creators - Audi has a pretty interesting story, too.

After the founder of Audi (August Horch) had been forced out his original company, he founded another car factory, but due to an incredibly ill-fated courtroom decision, couldn't name it after himself, since that was granted to his original company.
So he met with his business partners at their home to discuss the issue, and while they sat together, his business partner's young son (doing his homework in Latin) suddenly suggested to use "audi" instead of "horch". Because "audi" is the imperative to lat. "audire" (hear), just like "horch" can be the imperative to german "horchen" (antiquated for hear, hark).

So instead of naming it Horch in their own language, they named it Horch in another one.

[yorgunsamuray]

The word "Koromo" means "cloth" in Japanese and this town was a long time silk fabric production center. In fact, Toyoda's company was making looms before they got into automotive. They still make textile machinery even now. The town has a history of adapting its name to the dominant industry in the area.

[BOABModels]

Nissan comes from 'Nihon Sangyo' or 'Japan Industy'
What's more, its a combination of Japanese characters “ni” (“sun”) and “ssan” (“product” or “birth”). So product from the land of the rising sun.
Also, 2 and 3 in Japanese are read as 'Ni' and 'San' so Nissan's motorsport teams loving giving their cars the number 23.

[pedromenchik]

Brazil has a car named Pajero. It had to be renamed in Argentina, since this word means “wanker” there

[william_sun]

1:18 This is a phenomenon called "rendaku", which literally translates as "sequential voicing", where the unvoiced leading consonant of the second word of a compound word becomes its voiced counterpart (which isn't always its linguistic voiced counterpart, as with "h" → "b"). Japanese words of native etymology never begin with a voiced consonant, and so it's believed that this was originally used to differentiate a compound word from two separate words that would otherwise have the same pronunciation. This phenomenon survives in modern Japanese, but whether it occurs is now on a word-by-word basis instead of being guaranteed.

1:30 The reason why "菱" (hishi) is both the word for "rhombus" and "water caltrop" in Japanese is because the seeds of water caltrops are diamond-shaped. ("Water chestnut" normally refers to Eleocharis dulcis, the Chinese water chestnut, but is sometimes confusingly also used for species of the genus Trapa, the water caltrop.)

[viewer-of-content]

-Oldsmobile is named after Ransom E. Olds. -Pontiac is named after an Indian chief. -Cadillac is named after the founder of Detroit. -Mcdonald Douglas a hedge fund dude bought our Douglas aircraft.

[Emperor_Oshron]

yeah, alot of Japanese companies have a really long history--Nintendo is probably one of the younger household-name examples and they _still_ go back to the 19th century. iirc they started out making hanafuda cards and ran a taxi service somewhere between that and becoming more devoted to video games.

[mitchs.]

Ford is an acronym for, "Fix it again Tony." A nod at the pro skateboarder Tony Hawk.

[davea]

When Ford Motor Co. marketed the car called the 'pinto' in Brazil in the 1970s, they suddenly were confronted with their terrible mistake because in Brazil 'pinto' was slang for 'small penis.' Of course, no man wanted to own a 'pinto, ' so Ford changed the car’s name to Corcel, which means 'horse' in Portuguese. The car sold well after that.

[Mandy]

In Japan, the corporations are very much linked to the feudal past. It was their response to having to cope with the West. They basically changed feudalism to corporatism. The shogunates became the corporations. I can’t remember exactly when. I took modern Japanese history as an undergraduate in the early ‘80s.😂

[BOABModels]

The real irony with the name 'Jaguar' is that their founder and later chairman, was named after a different big cat - William Lyons (pronounced Lions).
So they could easily have been called Lyon rather than Jaguar.

[skyfeelan]

SS Cars renaming to Jaguar, also happened in our contemporary history, the company Fisker made Fisker Karma, it failed, and then it got sold to another company and renamed to Karma, probably to distance itself from the founder Henrik Fisker (it's ironic that his name is very similar to Henry Ford, yet his car company is failing)

[vaclav_fejt]

Tatra - named after the mountains they conquered
SAAB - acronym for "Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget" (Swedish aeroplane corporation)
LIAZ - acronym for "Liberecké automobilové závody" (Liberec automobile works)
Triumph - I guess it sounded cool

[jamesslick]

As to "Toyota City", There is an American precedence for this. The tiny Pennsylvania borough of Blawnox. This was a town that was originally called "Hoboken" (like the one in New Jersey). The Blaw-Knox company later built a large plant there and the town's name changed to reflect the importance of it (It employed many of the residents).

[Javaritto]

Subaru gets its name from the japanese name for the Pleiades star constellation, which is repesented in its logo.

A number of Toyota's model names mean "crown" in various languages - corolla (latin), camry (japanese), corona (also latin), and of course crown. Avalon also references royalty via the Arthorian legend, and the spinoff youth oriented brand Scion refers to a royal heir.

Cadillac was named after the founder of Detroit, and uses his coat of arms as their logo.

[lukelee]

I think you should be in all car ads.

"Hey, I'm the guy from Name Explain, look at this car, it's alright, you should buy it"

[taleseduardolima]

I would suggest an explainer about the name for geometric shapes. For example, I'm curious to know why in English a lozenge is called a "diamond", given the fact that actual diamonds are usually represented by a figure with five sides.

[MadiMikay]

It’s always a fun and unexpected surprise every time you’re on camera!! Love the content, keep up the good work 🥳

[macmedic]

Why does a chicken coop only have two doors?




If it had four, it would be a chicken sedan.