I thought the genesis of the nonsensical naming of cars was the mistake Chevrolet made some time back with the Nova. Sounds great in English, but means “no go”
in Espanol.
mick in arlington
And, as is policy here, the column in question.
Camry is an anagram of “my car”. I hope that was intentional.
The Nova was called the “Chevy” in Spanish speaking markets.
Market research did show that “Nova” (which means exploding star in Spanish, just as it does in English) could be interpreted to mean “No Go”. But the research was done early enough that the car was never actually sold as the “Nova” in Mexico or South America.
Hmm I may have been wrong. It may just be Argentina that renamed the car.
And then, of course, there is the Honda Fitta (which was sold under various different names in different parts of the World). They definitely didn’t use that name in Scandinavia as it means cnt*.
I am not a Japanese speaker, so I hope someone who is will either confirm me or correct me if I am wrong. However:
It is my understanding that “Camry” is a vague transliteration of the Japanese word for “crown”, which is actually similar to what “Corolla” means.
No, it wasn’t. Read the link up thread.
Again, completely false. It was sold as the Nova for years and did just fine. You are wrong about this.
Already noted in my very next post…the renaming only occured in Argentina.
My apologies for missing that.
It’s true, but appears complete unrelated to the Nova = No Va issue.
Well if we can use wikipedia for a reference…
From what I can gather from the Spanish 'net.
The engineer in charge of the Chevy Project, Baamonde, made the decision to not use “Nova” for the “No Va” reasons listed in the Urban Legend. But it was his decision and not a marketing blunder as per the Legend. But this is not from any good solid sources, just so-so sources. Other so-so sources say they just kept with a Brand people were familiar with. They previously had a successful Chevy and just went with the same name for familiarity with a tried and true marketable name.
Also of Note, the Chevy and the Nova were not exactly the same car. The Body was the same but there were differences in the interior and under the hood.
Another one that I’ve heard is that the Toyota MR2 is sold in francophone countries as simply the MR because if you say em-er-Deux out loud it sounds an awful lot like merde.
odd car names? That’s nothing.
The pharmaceutical industry… now that’s full of weird names.
I used to work for a market research firm that tested new pharmaceutical names. Basically a computer would spit out completely random names. Those names would then get tested in many ways. First is for pronunciation, then doctors would write it, and pharmacists would have to be able to read it and not confuse it with a drug that could cause some major problems. Then, people are asked what they thought of the names. Positive correlations (vigor, vitality, healthy, etc.) were good, but people drawing blanks were just as good.
Imagine Xanax if you’ve never heard of it before. Easy to pronounce, easy to spell, hard to misinterpret if written - and absolutely, completely meaningless until you know what it’s for - or have been introduced to advertising.
Or imagine that the marketing people had heard of Kodak and Xerox at some time in their lives. Or the 10,000 other products named in this way.
Hold on. “Kodak” is a nonce word, but “Xerox” is not; it comes from “xerography” which, while it is a coined word, has legitimate Greek roots meaning “dry” and “writing”.
Powers &8^]
“Talon” (the zipper company) was pulled out of a code book to replace “The U.S. Slide Fastener Company”, although, in hindsight, it’s a good name for zippers.
Even weirder, they pretty much all have TWO weird names, the weird drug name and the weird brand name.
“Ask your doctor about Goobleglotz(Hermephernine) and if it might be right for you.”
Any SUV named after American western cities that have no balls at all such as ‘The Santa Fe’. I think it’s meant to conjure up an image of ruggedness and it is meaningful but only in an ironic way, but maybe that was intentional. As anyone who has been to Santa Fe knows Santa Fe is not rugged in any way shape or form. I guess it’s a good car to sip a latte in.
I have a nitpick about the PostScript in the article where Cecil says
I’m guessing he’s implying that sienna is a nonsense word, but it’s not. It’s a real word and a real color, albeit one I normally associate with minivans. 