Skip to content
Home » Japanese

Japanese

Toyota and Japanese orthography

A radio quiz program suggested that Toyota uses a character written with eight strokes, while Toyoda uses one with ten, and that eight is a more auspicious number. This is strange for at least two reasons.

It turns out that BBC News contributor Kathryn Westcott published an article last week addressing the question, “Why is the car giant Toyota not Toyoda?” which does a pretty good job explaining the apparent inconsistency.