How is it that the “Datsun” name was dropped from “Datsun-Nissan”? Or, was it “Nissan-Datsun”? I forget… - Jinx
When the Nissan engineers made their first prototype car, they weren’t sure what to call it, so they asked for advice from a famous German automaker.
He asked them how long it had taken to make the car, and they replied, “Three weeks.”
The astonished German replied, “Dat Soon?” 
The actual origin of the word “Datsun” sounds like an urban legend, but I’ve never seen anyone debunk it.
The original car was called “DAT,” after the names of the designers (Den, Aoyama and Takeuchi). A more modern model was produced and was considered the “son of Dat” – Datson. The spelling was changed to Datsun, possibly because the Datson had some amusing connotations (this site says it was because it sounded like “hare loss,” but that assumes the words for “hare” and “hair” in Japanese sound similar).
A previous thread on the word “Datsun:”
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=150166
As far as I can find out, Nissan dates back to a company called Kaishinsha who produced a car called the DAT CAR. DAT is from the initials of the three original investors, but it also has a double meaning because “datto” means “a hare running away”, used as a metaphor for speed. Later (1926) the company merged with another auto maker and became “DAT Jidosha (DAT Automobile)”. Their first product was the DAT SON, as in son of DAT. However most Japanese read “son” to rhyme with “con”, and when you pronounce it that way it means “financial loss” or “poor deal” in Japanese. So they changed the spelling to DATSUN. Later the company announced that DAT stands for “Durable, Attractive, Trustworthy.” The company changed its name to Nissan in 1934, but continued to use Datsun as a brand name for some of its products. In Japan, the last time they used the Datsun name was during the 1990s when they sold the pickup trucks with that name.
Well, all these responses beg the question, why did they change their name to Nissan?
The name of the company has been Nissan since 1934, when several companies combined to form it. They started selling cars in the U.S. under their own name in 1980. The real question is:
"Does anyone have proof from NISSAN that DAT SON was actually supposed to mean “son of DAT”? Because I’m not accepting some fan-boy’s website as the ultimate authority here.
That’s what Nissan’s literature says:
http://www.nissan-global.com/GCC/Japan/FACTFILE/ff00e.pdf
(PDF file) Though it’s possible they changed the meaning later.
Uh, I don’t see anything in that document that says anything of the kind. Got a page number?
Bottom of page 13. Or just do a text search for DATSON.
I recall reading that Nissan of Japan did not want to enter the US market with the name ‘Nissan’ becuase during WWII, nissan (or a term very similar to it) was used in the US to describe Japanese Americans, and it was not always considered a compliment. To avoid any negative feeling towards the company, they chose to do business in America as Datsun.
By the 80s, thier own polls showed that a significant number of the US population did not make the connection between Nissan and WWII.
Since it technically is cheaper to field one name brand rather than two, Nissan of Japan decided to rename Datsun to Nissan.
As in Nippon (Japan) and the derivative slur of that?
Nisei