# 豊田: Toyota, Toyoda



## JOLe

Hey guys,

I've been watching a lot of news about the car. However I find that when we mention the brand, it's Toyota(丰田), but when talking about the same "丰田" as the family name of "丰田章男", it becomes Toyoda. Why is that?


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## Flaminius

Hi,

First of all, it's 豊田 in the Japanese script representation.  I changed the title accordingly.

In any which way, dixit Wikipedia:


> 創始者の名前が由来なので創業当時は「トヨダ」であった。ロゴや刻印も英語では「TOYODA」でエンブレムは漢字の「豊田」を使用していた。しかし、品質が向上して、アメリカに輸出をするようになることから、漢字のエンブレムではない英語で共通したものを作るために新トヨダマークの懸賞を行った。その時 に「トヨダ」ではなく「トヨタ」の読みで作られたアイデアが多く、実際に「TOYOTA」が採用される。


It is a telling piece of evidence that sometimes the script representation matters more than the pronunciation in Japanese.  Other than that, it is hard to imagine how Toyota (or Toyoda) employees were so careless about what the company they work for is _called_.


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## indigoduck

JOLe said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> I've been watching a lot of news about the car. However I find that when we mention the brand, it's Toyota(丰田), but when talking about the same "丰田" as the family name of "丰田章男", it becomes Toyoda. Why is that?


 
Flaminius said it well with his wikipedia, but just in case you can't read japanese, let me offer you the explanation in english.

Toyoda = Last name which in Japanese is トヨダ (豊田)

Toyota = It's just a name, in fact the name of the car company.
A long time ago, the company used to be called トヨダ(豊田) on behalf of the founder, but today it's no longer called that which is why today in Japan, the company is not: 豊田自動車株式会社 but トヨタ自動車株式会社. You'll notice they used Katakana to represent the mutation on Toyoda to Toyota, rather than Hiragana because it is a "mutation" of the language and hence a "name".

Your confusion comes because you've mixed up the Chinese and Japanese way of saying Toyota - the name of the car company. It's a chinese mistake. The Chinese didn't bother coming up with a new name because:

1. 田 can be TA or DA, so although it's not japanese correct, it's close enough.
2. If it tried to write "Toyota" ie: 头有他 (by sound) using chinese characters, it will be a big mess because firstly Toyota is a japanese company, not a chinese one.
3. chinese dialects don't always pronounce the character the same way and sticking it with 豊田(丰田) is safest because although it's outdated information, it still bears some relation to the car company because he was the founder.

Toyota (Car Company) expressed in English, Japanese, Chinese:

Toyota = English
トヨタ = Japanese
豊田(丰田) = Chinese speaking countries.

Toyoda (Last name) expressed in English, Japanese, Chinese:

Toyota = English
豊田 = Japanese Kanji
豊田(丰田) = Chinese


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## indigoduck

Flaminius said:


> Other than that, it is hard to imagine how Toyota (or Toyoda) employees were so careless about what the company they work for is _called_.


 
I just noticed the english version of Toyota wikipedia has a different layout and rather than "employees were so careless", this was their explanation, i quote:

Summary:
1. removed diacritic characters so didn't use voiced consonants Da compared to Ta
2. name change distanced the company from farming associations because Toyoda means "fertile rice paddies"

"In September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new logo. Out of 27,000 entries the winning entry was the three Japanese katakana letters for "Toyoda" in a circle. But Risaburō Toyoda, who had married into the family and was not born with that name, preferred "Toyota" (トヨタ) because it took eight brush strokes (a fortuitous number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end) and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one (voiced consonants are considered to have a "murky" or "muddy" sound compared to voiceless consonants, which are "clear"). Since "Toyoda" literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also helped to distance the company from associations with old-fashioned farming. The newly formed word was trademarked and the company was registered in August 1937 as the "Toyota Motor Company"."

Is this story wrong ?


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## Flaminius

My quote from the Japanese article does not really contradict with what you quoted from the English one.  The "careless" theory is my deduction from the quote (now I am regretting that it may have been too salient an instance of 我田引水).  Since "Toyoda" literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also helped to distance the company from associations with old-fashioned farming.​_Toyota_ means just the same as _Toyoda_; sequential voicing here, as in many words, is not a distinctive feature.  In fact, according to this Japanese family name search service, the script representation 豊田 with the unmistakable meaning "fertile rice paddies" is more often pronounced _Toyota_ than _Toyoda_.


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## indigoduck

what does 我田引水 mean ?



Flaminius said:


> My quote from the Japanese article does not really contradict with what you quoted from the English one. The "careless" theory is my deduction from the quote (now I am regretting that it may have been too salient an instance of 我田引水).
> ​


​


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## Ototsan

If I may summarize the discussion, 'Toyota' is the name of the company which is (in)famous for the car as well as the city where its head office is. 'Toyoda', on the other hand, is the family name of the company's founder.

For your information, I'd like to add that the family name 豊田　may sound either as 'Toyoda' or 'Toyota' depending on which part of Japan the person is - or his/her ancestors originate - from. There are other family name doublets which behave in a more or less similar way, e.g. 塩田 Shiota or Shioda. This knowledge, however, is of little help nowadays because of the mobility of the population.

Hope this helps.


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## Flaminius

Ototsan said:


> [T]he family name 豊田　may sound either as 'Toyoda' or 'Toyota' depending on which part of Japan the person is - or his/her ancestors originate - from. There are other family name doublets (....)


Interesting.  Do you think pronouncing a family name one way or another depends on the dialect spoken in the area where the family was based a few generations ago?


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## Ototsan

Please note that I didn't use the word 'dialect'.


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