[MangoToupe]

I don't know japanese or japanese culture, but it's possible this word extends beyond branding. cf https://venere.it/en/the-meaning-and-history-of-the-name-hon...

Notably:

> The name “Honda” has its roots in Japan, a country known for its rich traditions and cultural heritage. In Japanese, the name is written as 本田, which can be broken down into two characters: 本 (“hon”) meaning “origin” or “root” and 田 (“da” or “ta”) meaning “rice field” or “paddy field.” The combination of these characters conveys a sense of familial roots or origin tied to agricultural land, which was historically significant in Japan’s agrarian society.

> Traditionally, Japanese surnames like Honda were often linked to geographic locations or land ownership, reflecting the agricultural lifestyle of early Japan. Thus, the name Honda could have been used to denote a family that owned or worked on rice fields, marking them as stewards of the land.

[sleepy_keita]

No, it was just the name of the person who started the company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soichiro_Honda Lots of Japanese companies are like this. See also Toyota.

[LeonM]

> See also Toyota.

Toyota's founder is Kiichiro Toyoda (with a 'd'), and the company was originally named Toyoda, named after the founder. It was later changed to Toyota because it looked better in Katakana script (8 brush strokes, which is a lucky number), and it had a better meaning in Japanese. Apparently Toyoda is a farmer's name, and the company did not want to be associated with farming.

Similarly, Mazda comes from it's founder's name Matsuda, but was changed to Mazda when the first wheeled vehicles were produced (Mazda-Go). The official claim from Mazda is that it was named after Ahura Mazda, a God, but it is widely speculated that the name change was done to make it more appealing for international markets. I don't speak Japanese, but I have seen several videos on social media where the Japanese still pronounce Mazda as Matsuda.

[numpad0]

English and Japanese pronunciations never line up well which complicates communications, so people tweak spelling all the time. Toyota or Mazda or muRata is all about that. Matsuda was always matsuda in Japanese but spelling it as Mazda skips whole ordeal about matt-sudah or mar-TSOO-dah. Mazda is just short and close enough. Isuzu unfortunately has the yee-zoo-zoo problem, it's more like "iszh" but it won't roll on any tongue and there isn't much that they can do about it now.

"main farm", "rich farm", "pine farm", "bell tree", "sun field", "river cape", "fifty bells", it's all just surnames. Nothing particularly more awe inspiring than any regular surnames would be.

[MangoToupe]

That name didn't pop out of nowhere. It still has meaning beyond the brand. I'm wholly unconvinced that the only possible meaning is referring to that one company.

[nottorp]

I'll raise you Procter & Gamble.

Doesn't look like it has a deep meaning does it? I'm thinking that's how the Honda name looks to a Japanese.

The one major Japanese company whose name does have a deep meaning - that I know of - is Mazda, which is explicitly derived from Ahura Mazda.

[MangoToupe]

> Doesn't look like it has a deep meaning does it?

Like, to a non-english speaker? Because it looks loaded with meaning to me. Would you think that all instances of the word "morgan" refer to the bank "jp morgan"? Do you think that people who gamble are referring to the company you brought up? Why would you just give a top level domain name to a single company? No company is that interesting by itself. Hence, my question.

But maybe I'm just weird when it comes to language.

Anyway, I'll wait for a japanese person to fill me in ig—I can google where a name comes from, but this doesn't answer how it's actually perceived by someone who speaks the language.

[nottorp]

I’m not a native speaker. But I’ve read and communicated enough in English to see Procter & Gamble as just two names.

[thfuran]

Neither are anything like common as names (at least in the US. Maybe there's loads of them running around London), and both are words in common use. Johnson & Johnson seems like a much better example for that.

[glandium]

Mazda also comes from the founder's name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujiro_Matsuda

[throwaway2037]

I love this (meaningless) phrase:

    > a country known for its rich traditions and cultural heritage

Are there any countries that do not have "rich traditions and cultural heritage"? (Let's ask ChatGPT to "delve" into that...)

[echoangle]

The US maybe? I wouldn’t say the US has rich traditions and cultural heritage, they are too young for that.

[mensetmanusman]

Actually, America is one of the oldest continuously operating stable political systems in the world. (UK is older)

For example, the US in its current form is older than China, which was taken over relatively recently by the CCP who are also actively destroying most vestiges of cultural heritage through forced migration and erasing of inconvenient history.

[skylurk]

Nevertheless, China has rich traditions and cultural heritage that go back millennia.

Perhaps even the only place that can top Japan in this regard.

[throwaway2037]

    > Perhaps even the only place that can top Japan in this regard.

But not India or Korea or "Levantine" (modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon) or Egypt or Greece?

[throwaway2037]

Native Americans?

[prmoustache]

But their traditions and cultural heritage has been mostly erased and not followed by the the colons.

[kjkjadksj]

Native tribes are still very much as active as any other cultural group in the modern world. People still speak those languages and pass on the oral history.

[voidUpdate]

I mean, there are a lot of traditions in the US. Thanksgiving, 4th of july, groundhog day, all the random things little towns do.

[prmoustache]

I think it still pales compared to its neighbours like Mexico who have also been born through colonization.

But maybe that's because USA has a tendency to make everything a super commercial event which gives us that idea.

[kjkjadksj]

Its because mexico is a catholic nation and most things they do are related to that or a synecretic sort of thing with the ancient indigenous religions. If you want to see something similar in the US go to a Little Italy during the feast of the assumption. That is also a catholic event syncretic with old roman religion concepts.

[bluGill]

That is part of our culture heritage. People who want to claim the US doesn't have a rich culture are defining culture to exclude all culture in the US which is not fair. It isn't hard to see a lot of culture in the US if you look, but many people want to think there isn't any and so go out of their way not to see it.

[prmoustache]

I think culture and tradition are different things. Modern pop culture is not tradition for example.

[latexr]

I agree that reads like a fluff meaningless sentence on the level of a high school student trying to reach the minimum word count, but to give it some benefit of the doubt, it does say “a country known for”, not “a country which has”. Most countries aren’t known for their traditions and cultural heritage. Ask a few random people to tell you about Japan VS, say, Estonia.

[throwaway2037]

Perfect reply. +9000. Most of the other replies are usual HN nonsense.