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.
Animals with misleading names e.g. horseshoe crabs are not crabs, In fact they're not even crustaceans. Horseshoe crabs are most closely related to arachnids, like spiders and scorpions (due to the structure of their mouthparts).
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.
Aww, I came here to write that. Thanks for doing the job for me. By the way, they ended up using both names. Horch was a maker of luxury cars in pre-WWII Germany.
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.
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.)
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.
-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.
@@y_fam_goeglyd kinda the exact opposite happened with the vauxhall Nova/Corsa though, it was called the Opel Corsa in every other market it was sold in, but they called it the nova in the UK for one reason or another, and then it became Corsa in the UK for the second gen too.
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.
There was a similar incident in Europe in 2001 when Honda was about to release their renamed Honda City cars as "Honda Fitta". "Fitta" is slang for vagina in some of the Scandinavian languages. Honda had already spent a lot on the marketing for "Fitta" before they realized, so it was a pretty costly mistake for them. The name was changed to "Jazz" in Europe and "Fit" in Japan and the Americas.
@@SabiFrostique There was another instance, that a car company named their car "MR2", which in French would sound like "merde" which means something like "shit". (I don't know. I don't speak French.)
Another incident I heard about years and years ago is that when Chevrolet sent the Nova to Mexico, it didn't sell well, because "No va" in spanish means "no/doesn't go." Obviously nobody's going to want a car that doesn't go.
Nova is Latin for “new,” and is the astronomical term for an exploding (dying) star, because when a star too dim to see with the naked eye goes nova, it often becomes bright enough (for a time) to outshine other stars as a “new” star. Ford obviously meant for the car to “shine brightly,” but Latin “nova” became “nueva ” in Spanish, so Spanish speakers didn’t quite get THAT meaning of the name. Some Americans got the idea that the Mitsubishi logo represented the three-bladed propellers of the Mitsubishi “Zero” airplanes flown by the Japanese military in WWII, so the joke “from the people who brought you Pearl Harbor” was invented, and so, many Americans refused to buy Mitsubishi cars. The legal branch of the US military, whose duties include prosecuting, defending, and judging in courts-martial, are known as the Judge Advocate General corps, or JAG for short. This is also, coincidentally, what they could be driving if they were practicing law as civilians. In the case of the Italian sports car Alfa Romeo, its name is also the NATO and aviation phonetic code to spell its initials: AR.
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)
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.
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).
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.
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
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.😂
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.
Citroën is named after its founder, André Citroën. It's very similar to the Dutch word citroen ("lemon") which people sometimes joke about. But what people may not know, is that his grandfather actually was Dutch and sold tropical fruits, and was named "lemon" after his profession! So the jokes have some truth to them. When the family moved to France, they added the accent mark.
In Australia, Volvo owners have a reputation for lacking road awareness; the company even leant into the hatred when promoting a sports variant of one of their models with the tagline “You wish you were a bloody Volvo driver!”. Volvo cars also have a reputation for passenger safety - one could argue that it’s on a par with an APC. (10 points if you get the reference.)
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.
@@EdKolis lozenge originally meant rhombus shape, but because the medicine looked like lozenge in shape, the name stuck. but now lozenges come in many different shapes, so the original meaning is kinda lost.
Another cute Japanese name origin is Subaru, which is the Japanese name for the Pleiades constellation featured in their logo. There was even a Subaru tie-in Anime called Wish upon the Pleiades
I've talked a bit about strange car make names, here's a few... Moose Jaw Standard, Alldays & Onions, Roots and Venebles, ASS, Red Jacket and, of course, Pants.
Mazda - The company line is that it is taken from an ancient creator god Ahura Mazda. Though the founder's family name is Matsuda, which is a little similar.
I remember a RUclips video where they showed the pronunciation of car brands in their respective native language. When they had Japanese people pronounce "Mazda", it actually sounded like "Matsuda".
I was wondering why Mazda didn’t make it in this video. A Japanese cork company naming their car brand after the Zorastrian goddess of dreams, creativity, goodness and light. Also, Mazda should always have blue cars in their lineup. Ahura>Azura>Azure Blue.
The constellation of the seven sisters representing the seven companies that came together to form Subaru. If you remember the Subaru SVX (Ah the halcyon days of the 90’s, literally), It was called the Alcyone in other markets; Alcyone being the brightest star in the Pleiades constellation.
Random but semi-related: Someone wrote the hanja for "Samsung" in one of my chat rooms a while ago and I misread it as Japanese, pronouncing it "Mitsuboshi". (三星, meaning three stars. In fact, Samsung used a three-star logo for years.)
0:19 as a german, living close to Stuttgart (where the Porsche HQs are) I can tell you with great confidence, that the latter pronounciation is more correct. it is hard for people, who dont speak german to pronouce it properly, because we pronounce it more agressive (I know, who would have thought).
Have you met the descendents of the great Doctor Hoffmann of Stuttgart? According to the Blackadder comedy series Doctor Hoffmann of Stuttgart owned the largest leech farm in Europe during the Elizabethan age. 😜 Lol hahaha
Well in German we try to pronounce every letter, even the sad ones at the end. So Porsche with an e at the end like the e in education. But Porsche is actually a bad example for German pronunciation. Because the "sch" is one of the few examples where you don't just say words as if you were spelling them fast, letter by letter. "Sch" in German is like the "sh" in sh*t.
There is now a neighbourhood, formerly an independent city (I believe), called "Ford City" in Windsor, Ontario named for the Ford Motor Company factory.
1:38 - those are Chinese water chestnuts which are the edible corms (underground storage organs) of a sedge. Japanese water chestnuts are the seeds of the flowering plant shown in your next shot and they (the seeds) are diamond-shaped.
Rollin', rollin', rollin' Though the streams are swollen Keep them doggies rollin' Rawhide Rain and wind and weather Hell bent for leather Wishin' my gal was by my side All the things I'm missin' Good vittles, love and kissin' Are waiting at the end of my ride -Frankie Laine (Probably better than the Klingon Empire joke I was contemplating. )
On the subject of makes of cars that are acronyms - and when I think FIAT I think of the Latin for 'faith', which would be a sign on trust in that make - there is also SAAB (Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, Swedish Aircraft PLC), which apparently inspired Anni-Frid, Björn, Benny and Agnetha to name themselves ABBA. Incidentally, given that those are acronyms, 'Fiat', 'Saab' and 'Abba' just look so wrong to me! On another bent, there is the strange tale of the marque Škoda, which is Czech for 'a pity', founded by Václavs Laurin and Klement. By a bizarre coincidence, Miluška Voborníková, who was born in the city which was the original base of Škoda, Mladá Boleslav, did a Czech-language cover of ABBA's Eurovision Song Contest Winner of 1974, 'Waterloo', under the identical title. Eva Kostolányiová did likewise in Slovak, recorded on my thirteenth birthday and Isabelle Morizet's/Carene Cheryl's/Karen Cheryl's nineteenth birthday of 19th July 1974, not much over a year before she passed away, having contracted breast cancer - around the time ABBA won in Brighton - while on tour in Sweden, of all places.
@@christopherbentley7289 It actually gets funnier because it can mean more things depending on context. Such as "needless waste" (like when you say "What a waste!") and more importantly, "damage". So when you damage your car, you're talking about škoda too. "Škoda na autě Škoda" = "Damage to the Škoda car." :D
@@Potkanka Thanks for filling in those extra snippets of information - quite hilarious! I should imagine that the English verb 'to scathe' (ie., 'to damage') is related thereto, via the German 'beschädigen'. It's interesting how the concepts of shame/pity and damage seem to go around with each other linguistically, as there is the French expression, 'quelle dommage!', which is clearly related to 'damage', as well as the German 'Schade!', of course.
@@christopherbentley7289 No problem! Thanks for this information too, it's cool how the meanings are similar. Worldwide, these languages are still closely related to each other after all. And it definitely makes sense for Czech and German as they influenced each other a lot. Also I looked into my etymology dictionary and škoda is actually a loan word from old German "scado" (which is Schade today).
Winter is coming, so here is my suggestion for a hot video: Chilies. You can either go for cultivars like frutescens, baccatum, etc, or for the common names, like trinidad moruga, scottish bonnet, etc. Or both. Nothing like some peppery heat to keep the cold away ;)
That’s a Sino‐Japanese word for three. It’s analogous to how “four” and “quadri‐” means the same thing. “Mitsu” is a historical form of the modern “mittsu” (三つ).
there are many car makers that are named after the founder of the Company such as Chevrolet is named after the Chevrolet Brothers Arthur and Louis or Buick named after its founder David Dunbar Buick. etomology of car names would be a fun topic as there are numerous classic cars named after creatures great and small such as Buick Skylark Chevrolet Impala Pontiac Firebird Mercury Cougar/Monarch etc. or cars named after places such as the Cadillac Eldorado/Seville Chevrolet Monte Carlo Ferrari Maranello Lincoln Versailles Chrysler Sebring etc.
A fun twist on car names based on people is Audi. It was established by August Horch, but he had already started and left a company with his name on it, which roughly means “Listen!” So this called for a bit of creativity rather than just slapping his name on it. Or did it? Audi is a Latin translation of his name. Still lazy, but less obvious. The two Horch-named companies eventually merged as part of the four-way Auto Union merger, the source of Audi’s current four-rings logo.
How about more american car-brands, like "Buick"? The name is from Scotland. And a funny trivial fact about another US car-brand: Chrysler. The name is actually German, but got englishified/anglicized when the founders ancestor came to America
:22 Unless I'm beaten to it and in the spirit of using the native pronunciation, I'd go with Por-shuh. Also, with VW, it's a tongue twister for non-native speakers: Folks-VaH-gen. 4:26 I'm pretty sure I heard this one time: "Fix It Again, Tony". Almost like Ford's such acronym goes along with, "Fix Or Repair Daily". No offense to Fiat and Ford owners.
The last car I owned was a Saturn, named after the Roman god of TIME. The company was only in business for 25 years, which isn't a long TIME, which illustrates why smart people should not worship Roman deities. 🕰 Roman togas, on the other hand, are quite breezy on your man parts. I'm just saying.
I was born with the middle name Bellobabel--is there any etymological info in your arsenal you can offer to explain that? I'm adopted and my birth mother was schizophrenic but quite intelligent, so I don't believe it just 'came out of nowhere.' (She spelled it with an umlaut over one of the vowels--the O maybe?, if that indicates anything additional?) It was fun growing up in the South in the 80's, being a white girl with the name Ingrio Bellobabel Smith.
Could the SS Jaguar be some what related to what was happening in Germany at the time, with SS Tigers and SS panthers? and then to change companies name after 1945 kinda fits into the bad name ‘SS’ had in public conciseness.
"Diamond" can be a synonym for "rhombus" in some contexts, such as this one. Like how this is a heart: ❤, even though it's not the organ that pumps blood through your body.
Suggest a topic for next Monday's video!
Name of type of coffee for next week patrick
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.
Animals with misleading names e.g. horseshoe crabs are not crabs, In fact they're not even crustaceans. Horseshoe crabs are most closely related to arachnids, like spiders and scorpions (due to the structure of their mouthparts).
Shapes or Disney Princesses.
Names of river crossings (OxFord, CamBridge, etc)
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.
Aww, I came here to write that. Thanks for doing the job for me. By the way, they ended up using both names. Horch was a maker of luxury cars in pre-WWII Germany.
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.
My mum has a Toyota sewing machine and it always sparked curiosity in me that a car maker would make those too
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.)
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.
-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.
Brazil has a car named Pajero. It had to be renamed in Argentina, since this word means “wanker” there
🤣 brilliant! That's better than Vauxhall having to rename the "Nova" in Spain ;)
Mitsubishi Pajero is everywhere
There was also a city car, don't recall who made it, called LaPuta. Jay Leno had a field day with it in his talk show.
@@y_fam_goeglydit’s Chevy, vauxhall only sell in the UK, and it was a myth, nova doesn’t translate to no go, no va does, they’re different.
@@y_fam_goeglyd kinda the exact opposite happened with the vauxhall Nova/Corsa though, it was called the Opel Corsa in every other market it was sold in, but they called it the nova in the UK for one reason or another, and then it became Corsa in the UK for the second gen too.
Ford is an acronym for, "Fix it again Tony." A nod at the pro skateboarder Tony Hawk.
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.
There was a similar incident in Europe in 2001 when Honda was about to release their renamed Honda City cars as "Honda Fitta". "Fitta" is slang for vagina in some of the Scandinavian languages. Honda had already spent a lot on the marketing for "Fitta" before they realized, so it was a pretty costly mistake for them. The name was changed to "Jazz" in Europe and "Fit" in Japan and the Americas.
@@SabiFrostique
There was another instance, that a car company named their car "MR2", which in French would sound like "merde" which means something like "shit". (I don't know. I don't speak French.)
Another incident I heard about years and years ago is that when Chevrolet sent the Nova to Mexico, it didn't sell well, because "No va" in spanish means "no/doesn't go." Obviously nobody's going to want a car that doesn't go.
Nova is Latin for “new,” and is the astronomical term for an exploding (dying) star, because when a star too dim to see with the naked eye goes nova, it often becomes bright enough (for a time) to outshine other stars as a “new” star. Ford obviously meant for the car to “shine brightly,” but Latin “nova” became “nueva ” in Spanish, so Spanish speakers didn’t quite get THAT meaning of the name.
Some Americans got the idea that the Mitsubishi logo represented the three-bladed propellers of the Mitsubishi “Zero” airplanes flown by the Japanese military in WWII, so the joke “from the people who brought you Pearl Harbor” was invented, and so, many Americans refused to buy Mitsubishi cars.
The legal branch of the US military, whose duties include prosecuting, defending, and judging in courts-martial, are known as the Judge Advocate General corps, or JAG for short. This is also, coincidentally, what they could be driving if they were practicing law as civilians.
In the case of the Italian sports car Alfa Romeo, its name is also the NATO and aviation phonetic code to spell its initials: AR.
@@HalfEye79That is correct. Similarly, in Spanish it is "mierda", which we sometimes abbreviate as "mrd". In French, "two" is "deux" so yeah.
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)
Why does a chicken coop only have two doors?
If it had four, it would be a chicken sedan.
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.
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).
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.
They even dabbled into the redlight industry. Nintendo is fucc crazy
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
There is also a LiAZ in Russia, which stands for Likinskiy Avtobusnyy Zavod
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.😂
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.
I suppose this is the place to mention Pontiac too. I'm not a car guy, so I don't know if it's a defunct Canadian brand and not internationally known.
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"
Citroën is named after its founder, André Citroën. It's very similar to the Dutch word citroen ("lemon") which people sometimes joke about. But what people may not know, is that his grandfather actually was Dutch and sold tropical fruits, and was named "lemon" after his profession! So the jokes have some truth to them. When the family moved to France, they added the accent mark.
It’s always a fun and unexpected surprise every time you’re on camera!! Love the content, keep up the good work 🥳
Volvo be like "They see me rollin', they hatin'."
In Australia, Volvo owners have a reputation for lacking road awareness; the company even leant into the hatred when promoting a sports variant of one of their models with the tagline “You wish you were a bloody Volvo driver!”.
Volvo cars also have a reputation for passenger safety - one could argue that it’s on a par with an APC. (10 points if you get the reference.)
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.
naturally occuring diamond has rhomboidal shape.
only "Round Brilliant Cut" diamond has that five side shape if viewed from the side.
Wait, that's a lozenge? I thought lozenges were more oval shaped?
@@EdKolis lozenge originally meant rhombus shape, but because the medicine looked like lozenge in shape, the name stuck. but now lozenges come in many different shapes, so the original meaning is kinda lost.
Another cute Japanese name origin is Subaru, which is the Japanese name for the Pleiades constellation featured in their logo. There was even a Subaru tie-in Anime called Wish upon the Pleiades
I've talked a bit about strange car make names, here's a few... Moose Jaw Standard, Alldays & Onions, Roots and Venebles, ASS, Red Jacket and, of course, Pants.
Mazda - The company line is that it is taken from an ancient creator god Ahura Mazda. Though the founder's family name is Matsuda, which is a little similar.
I remember a RUclips video where they showed the pronunciation of car brands in their respective native language. When they had Japanese people pronounce "Mazda", it actually sounded like "Matsuda".
I was wondering why Mazda didn’t make it in this video. A Japanese cork company naming their car brand after the Zorastrian goddess of dreams, creativity, goodness and light. Also, Mazda should always have blue cars in their lineup. Ahura>Azura>Azure Blue.
Subaru is cool - Pleiades in Japanese I think which is the constellation on the brand.
The constellation of the seven sisters representing the seven companies that came together to form Subaru. If you remember the Subaru SVX (Ah the halcyon days of the 90’s, literally), It was called the Alcyone in other markets; Alcyone being the brightest star in the Pleiades constellation.
In germany, we give a different type of acronym to fiat: Fehler In Alle Teile.
Translated to English: Mistakes In Every Component
😂 my English friend says it as Fix It Again Tomorrow. I’m sensing a theme!
@@davespanksalot8413 Or Fix It Again, Tony.
On the subject of cities that have changed their name, maybe you could do a whole video on that (e.g., New Amsterdam to New York).
That would be an interesting topic.👍🏻
Volkswagen
German for "[the] people's car", because that's how Hitler intended it.
Only certain people. The ones he in his twisted mind thought were superior.
@@brianarbenz1329, fair enough
The reason Volvo went with its name is because it started as a ball bearing company before beginning to manufacture cars and heavy trucks.
Random but semi-related: Someone wrote the hanja for "Samsung" in one of my chat rooms a while ago and I misread it as Japanese, pronouncing it "Mitsuboshi". (三星, meaning three stars. In fact, Samsung used a three-star logo for years.)
Some dutch brands DAF, Spyker, Donkervoort and Waaijenberg.
0:19 as a german, living close to Stuttgart (where the Porsche HQs are) I can tell you with great confidence, that the latter pronounciation is more correct. it is hard for people, who dont speak german to pronouce it properly, because we pronounce it more agressive (I know, who would have thought).
Have you met the descendents of the great Doctor Hoffmann of Stuttgart? According to the Blackadder comedy series Doctor Hoffmann of Stuttgart owned the largest leech farm in Europe during the Elizabethan age. 😜 Lol hahaha
I remember hearing, that there was a town named "Fordson" in Russia. It was named after the 1917 "Fordson" Ford tractor.
Ford built a number of car factories in Russia. Just about every single truck in Russia was a Ford AA derived GAZ AA.
What rolled in Volvo was the bearings. It was set up by a maker of roller bearings to demonstrate their product.
I hoped you'd include Mazda and its fascinating Japanese - Zoroastrian connection. Or have you already done that? Anyway, great video and thank you! 😊
two names came to mind while bloopers rolled: Škoda and BMW
FORD = Fix Or Repair Daily. FIAT = Fix It Again, Tony.
FORD = Found On Road, Dead.
TOYOTA = The One You Ought To Avoid
BMW = Body Made Wrong
beat me to it XD
and let's not even go to PONTIAC...
Lotus - Lots of trouble, usually serious 😅
This is a great video. Shame it doesn’t have more views
Datsun -> Nissan. I feel like that would be something interesting to do about cars.
Names of desserts & pastries from around the world like Sachertorte or Mont Blanc or Babka.
Well in German we try to pronounce every letter, even the sad ones at the end. So Porsche with an e at the end like the e in education.
But Porsche is actually a bad example for German pronunciation. Because the "sch" is one of the few examples where you don't just say words as if you were spelling them fast, letter by letter. "Sch" in German is like the "sh" in sh*t.
Actually, Patrick's pronunciation of "Porsche" with the final e wasn't bad at all.
@@alexj9603Of course! Way better than what I hear elsewhere on the internet.
Like Porschy or Poarsh or what some people come up with
There is now a neighbourhood, formerly an independent city (I believe), called "Ford City" in Windsor, Ontario named for the Ford Motor Company factory.
Back in the 70s , I think, fiat had a car called the Lux, which made it, in Latin, 'let there be light'.
1:38 - those are Chinese water chestnuts which are the edible corms (underground storage organs) of a sedge. Japanese water chestnuts are the seeds of the flowering plant shown in your next shot and they (the seeds) are diamond-shaped.
Rollin', rollin', rollin'
Though the streams are swollen
Keep them doggies rollin'
Rawhide
Rain and wind and weather
Hell bent for leather
Wishin' my gal was by my side
All the things I'm missin'
Good vittles, love and kissin'
Are waiting at the end of my ride
-Frankie Laine
(Probably better than the Klingon Empire joke I was contemplating. )
😁
CHOCOLATE STARFISHHH
Rollin, Rollin, Rollin
Keep those prices rollin
Rollback
Yep those old WalMart commercials with the smiley face knocking down the prices.
“We play both kinds of music here. Country and Western.”
Fantastic change of pace!
Ransom Eli Olds had two companies named afted him. After he lost control of Oldsmobile he formed Reo.
And two different bands - REO Speedwagon and Diamond Rio - were named for that company. XD
On the subject of makes of cars that are acronyms - and when I think FIAT I think of the Latin for 'faith', which would be a sign on trust in that make - there is also SAAB (Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, Swedish Aircraft PLC), which apparently inspired Anni-Frid, Björn, Benny and Agnetha to name themselves ABBA. Incidentally, given that those are acronyms, 'Fiat', 'Saab' and 'Abba' just look so wrong to me! On another bent, there is the strange tale of the marque Škoda, which is Czech for 'a pity', founded by Václavs Laurin and Klement.
By a bizarre coincidence, Miluška Voborníková, who was born in the city which was the original base of Škoda, Mladá Boleslav, did a Czech-language cover of ABBA's Eurovision Song Contest Winner of 1974, 'Waterloo', under the identical title. Eva Kostolányiová did likewise in Slovak, recorded on my thirteenth birthday and Isabelle Morizet's/Carene Cheryl's/Karen Cheryl's nineteenth birthday of 19th July 1974, not much over a year before she passed away, having contracted breast cancer - around the time ABBA won in Brighton - while on tour in Sweden, of all places.
Škoda is named after Emil Škoda. Although his company wasn't making cars, it just merged with the company of Laurin and Klement.
@@PotkankaWhat a pity that his surname means 'a pity' in the context of branding.
@@christopherbentley7289 It actually gets funnier because it can mean more things depending on context. Such as "needless waste" (like when you say "What a waste!") and more importantly, "damage". So when you damage your car, you're talking about škoda too. "Škoda na autě Škoda" = "Damage to the Škoda car." :D
@@Potkanka Thanks for filling in those extra snippets of information - quite hilarious! I should imagine that the English verb 'to scathe' (ie., 'to damage') is related thereto, via the German 'beschädigen'. It's interesting how the concepts of shame/pity and damage seem to go around with each other linguistically, as there is the French expression, 'quelle dommage!', which is clearly related to 'damage', as well as the German 'Schade!', of course.
@@christopherbentley7289 No problem! Thanks for this information too, it's cool how the meanings are similar. Worldwide, these languages are still closely related to each other after all. And it definitely makes sense for Czech and German as they influenced each other a lot. Also I looked into my etymology dictionary and škoda is actually a loan word from old German "scado" (which is Schade today).
As a 26 year old bird nerd i approve of this video
Winter is coming, so here is my suggestion for a hot video: Chilies. You can either go for cultivars like frutescens, baccatum, etc, or for the common names, like trinidad moruga, scottish bonnet, etc. Or both. Nothing like some peppery heat to keep the cold away ;)
MG and Morris (Morris Minor etc) was founded by Baron Morris of Nuffield, who also founded Nuffield health
Chrysler was named for it's founder. Dodge was named after the brothers that founded it. Buick was also named after it's founder.
“She’s a Buick!”
“Chevrolet, actually”
A particularly interesting video, even for you!
In German, when a name ends with -e, it's a schwa. So if I were to anglicize it, it'll be "por-sha" (excuse the lack of IPA)
no it´s Porsche with an -e at the end, there is actually a video from Porsche with the correct pronunciation
@@reiken9091
But its pronounced like a schwa. Believe me. I am German.
ˈpɔʁʃə in IPA
Ferdinand Porsche was my grandmother’s godfather. It always bugged me so much as a kid when people didn’t pronounce the e.
@@HalfEye79 I am German aswell
Subaru is the Japanese name for the constellation Peliades
1:10 I always thought the Japanese name for three is "san". According to Google Translate, "Mitsu" means "dense"
That’s a Sino‐Japanese word for three. It’s analogous to how “four” and “quadri‐” means the same thing. “Mitsu” is a historical form of the modern “mittsu” (三つ).
@@さゆぬ-x7i okay, arigato
This is a great video. Shame it doesn’t have more veiws
Wait, so FIAT doesn’t stand for “Fix It Again Tony!”?
I don't know why but I haven't received any notifications for your videos in the past few weeks.
You have excellent ideas concerning video content, thanks. 👍❤️
Not the "Eght ststst ah...... take care."😂
🎶🎵They see me rolling, they hating 🎶🎵
A Finn told me that they find the name of the Mercedes Vito van hilarious as vito means "the lady's private parts".
It is pronounced to-yo-ta, not toy-o-ta.
Also, Subaru is the constellation "the Pleiades."
As the story goes when Toyota named its luxury brand Lexus as an acronym of" Luxury for Export to US"
there are many car makers that are named after the founder of the Company such as Chevrolet is named after the Chevrolet Brothers Arthur and Louis or Buick named after its founder David Dunbar Buick. etomology of car names would be a fun topic as there are numerous classic cars named after creatures great and small such as Buick Skylark Chevrolet Impala Pontiac Firebird Mercury Cougar/Monarch etc. or cars named after places such as the Cadillac Eldorado/Seville Chevrolet Monte Carlo Ferrari Maranello Lincoln Versailles Chrysler Sebring etc.
A fun twist on car names based on people is Audi. It was established by August Horch, but he had already started and left a company with his name on it, which roughly means “Listen!” So this called for a bit of creativity rather than just slapping his name on it. Or did it? Audi is a Latin translation of his name. Still lazy, but less obvious. The two Horch-named companies eventually merged as part of the four-way Auto Union merger, the source of Audi’s current four-rings logo.
my wife calls me a bird brain and I take it as a complement. brands named/models after birds seems to be semi-common
i thought you will tackle all car manufacturers.
Fiat lux: let there be light. Fiat panis: motto of the FAO, let there be bread
car more like cart
Gotem
I just imagine, Optimus Prime going Volvo.
How about more american car-brands, like "Buick"? The name is from Scotland.
And a funny trivial fact about another US car-brand: Chrysler. The name is actually German, but got englishified/anglicized when the founders ancestor came to America
Haven’t watch the video but I’m assuming that Honda is named after the famed Street Fighter E. Honda
You sound just like Davey MacDonagh from Brassic
FIAT stands for "Fix It Again, Tony", or I've been watching too much King of the Hill
It's actually "porsha". It's German, and in German they pronounce every letter. The "e" in this case is pronounced "uh".
and random put the surname Porsche means Pig Farmer (we get Boar and Pork from the same root i think)
I didn’t become really into birds until I was about 38.
I'm more than 26 years old and can confirm: I love birds.
:22 Unless I'm beaten to it and in the spirit of using the native pronunciation, I'd go with Por-shuh. Also, with VW, it's a tongue twister for non-native speakers: Folks-VaH-gen.
4:26 I'm pretty sure I heard this one time: "Fix It Again, Tony". Almost like Ford's such acronym goes along with, "Fix Or Repair Daily". No offense to Fiat and Ford owners.
“Is it Porsch or Porsche?” It’s German. Just look it up.
You do in fact pronounce the e in Porsche. Having silent letters isn't really a thing in german.
What about the Mercury car company? Is it named after the Roman god or the element?
Please do a video on Hyundai or KIA.
4:04 fix it again tony
Ferrari named after Mesut Özil.
BYD - build Your Dream.
Please explain the meaning of the name of the motorcycle company.
The last car I owned was a Saturn, named after the Roman god of TIME. The company was only in business for 25 years, which isn't a long TIME, which illustrates why smart people should not worship Roman deities. 🕰 Roman togas, on the other hand, are quite breezy on your man parts. I'm just saying.
Fiat stands for fix it again tony
I mean Volvo is literally I roll, so it’s from the car/wheel’s point of view 🙃
I was born with the middle name Bellobabel--is there any etymological info in your arsenal you can offer to explain that? I'm adopted and my birth mother was schizophrenic but quite intelligent, so I don't believe it just 'came out of nowhere.' (She spelled it with an umlaut over one of the vowels--the O maybe?, if that indicates anything additional?)
It was fun growing up in the South in the 80's, being a white girl with the name Ingrio Bellobabel Smith.
Could the SS Jaguar be some what related to what was happening in Germany at the time, with SS Tigers and SS panthers?
and then to change companies name after 1945 kinda fits into the bad name ‘SS’ had in public conciseness.
if all cars are named after their founders, it would be incredibly boring, except my old car, not sure how I should feel about the name "Hitler Jetta"
The irony of name explain not knowing how to pronounce Porsche. 😂 It’s not “porsh”
Not correct. The bishi means "rhombus", not diamond. Therefore, Mitsubishi refers to three rhombuses.
"Diamond" can be a synonym for "rhombus" in some contexts, such as this one. Like how this is a heart: ❤, even though it's not the organ that pumps blood through your body.
Rambler was probably named after the current U.S. President?
You look a lot better than your logo indicates. Just sayin.