{"id":370791,"date":"2010-02-27T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10002660"},"modified":"2010-02-27T14:30:32","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T19:30:32","slug":"why-is-the-president-of-toyota-named-toyoda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/370791","title":{"rendered":"Why Is The President Of Toyota Named Toyoda?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Why do the Toyota car company and the Toyoda family that founded it have different names? It’s not because of transliteration magic exactly: it’s because the company changed the characters that form its name in order to have a luckier number of brush strokes, and aid in their quest for world vehicular domination. Or something. <\/p>\n

The Washington Post spoke to some Japanese language experts in an attempt to get to the bottom of this mystery.<\/p>\n

Writing “Toyoda” in Japanese requires 10 brush strokes, explains John R. Malott, president of the Japan-America Society of Washington DC, but writing “Toyota” requires eight.<\/p>\n

While “8” is considered an auspicious number, “10” is not, said Malott, who visited with the company during his years as a State Department official. “Ten” consists of two strokes crossed against each other and resembles the “plus” symbol, or even a crossroads or an uncertain path. Not a good omen for a company.<\/p>\n

“It’s a very Japanese way of thinking,” Malott said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nWhy the car company is named Toyota, not Toyoda<\/a> [Washington Post]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do the Toyota car company and the Toyoda family that founded it have different names? It’s not because of transliteration magic exactly: it’s because the company changed the characters that form its name in order to have a luckier number of brush strokes, and aid in their quest for world vehicular domination. Or something. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}