For the last 28 years, I’ve scribbled about topics from the groundbreaking Nissan Skyline GT-R and Honda NSX of the bubble era to recent highlights such as the hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai fuel cell car. But what sends my eyebrows skywards more than anything in this country is the unique way the Japanese name their cars. Let’s face it, many are just comical.
Names like Odyssey and Land Cruiser and MX-5 translate superbly into just about any language. But for the number of names that do sound good, and cross borders without incident, there are just as many names that will have you falling out of your seat at their very utterance.
So let’s check out the seven weirdest car names from Japan.
Ranking in at No. 7 is the Mitsubishi Dingo. When I first heard the name, I thought they were joking. They were not. I can’t believe that none of their marketing people, those responsible for naming cars, had not heard that dingo refers to a wild Australian dog infamous for stealing a baby out of a tent. What will they come up with next? The Mitsubishi Pitbull?
No. 6 is the Mazda Laputa. Mazda’s car-naming gurus thought it might be cute to name a small car after a fictional place ― Laputa ― from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. But they failed to explore what such a name might mean in other languages, such as Spanish. Given that Spanish is spoken by over 300 million people worldwide, making it the third most spoken language on the planet, might it seem a little ignorant to call a car something that means “a lady of the night”?
That leads me to No. 5. How about the Mitsubishi Pajero? Seems fair. A well-known, sturdy 4WD SUV with rally credentials. Right, but once again, this name too raises eyebrows in Spain. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that it has an overly sexual connotation. That’s why the name Pajero was changed to Shogun in Europe.
Ranking in at No. 4 is the Nissan Fuga, a V-8 powered sedan. In Japanese, it means “elegance,” while in Italian it translated as “escape,” two perfectly reasonable descriptions for a luxury car. But in English, or at least to this writer, it sounds like an obscure stale mushroom. So if you say, “I drive a Fuga,” to a group of Italians or Japanese, it sounds impressive. To a gathering of native English speakers on the other hand, well…
At No. 3 is one of my favorites, the Mitsubishi Legnum. To the company’s beancounters, Legnum must have sounded cool, although for the life of me I can’t imagine why. When you think of it in an English context, this term could not be more inappropriate for a sporty wagon that purports to be a driver’s car. I mean, hey, drive it too long and you get a leg numb, I mean numb leg.
When I see such names, I feel like I’m watching a badly dubbed martial arts movie. Recall those early Bruce Lee films such as Fist of Fury in which the actors’ mouths moved at random as the English voice-over struggled to keep up.
That’s the way the vast majority of Japanese car names come across. A little bit weird. It’s like you’re in a parallel universe where all the rules of language have been thrown out the window and just about anything goes.
So why do the Japanese use English or Latin-sounding words? The Japanese say that they sound more exotic and culturally deeper than Japanese names, even if they don’t understand the actual meaning of the word. They have a point, though I think the bottom line is this: The vast majority of Japanese involved in naming products just don’t really give a hoot what a name means outside of Japan. As long as it looks cool, and captures the attention of target customers, then that’s all that matters. The problem is, however, that many of the words just don’t make sense.
At No. 2 ― hang on, parents, shoo your kids out of the room ― the Daihatsu Naked. That’s like calling a car “Zenra” which is the Japanese equivalent of naked. Check out this little 660 cc minicar’s exterior, though, and you can see where that “raw” name might have come from. The car looks like it has lost its top layer of sheetmetal. In its defense, it does actually look naked, but to call it that – well – only in Japan.
And at No. 1 must be the Isuzu Bighorn – one name that is not Spanish but is almost guaranteed to generate instant giggling in any English-speaking situation. Now out of production, its name speaks for itself.
Then of course there are many more names like Note, That’s, Century, Life, Zest, Latte, Freed and President. There we go again. Here I am back in that dubbed Bruce Lee flick again. Oh well, when in Rome…
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2016/08/31/the-7-weirdest-japanese-car-names/