Name Awards Blog

Sony is surely one of the best known brands of the whole world. It truly embodies a brand promise reputation that has been earned over the years. When people really stop and think about it, they realize this is a Japanese company. But most people don't see it that way, since Sony has (a) an English like name and (b) is truly a global player that acts local in its chosen markets.

But the company started life as Tokyo Electron Company! A company that just happened to invent a small transistor radio they called Sony - from the Latin word sonus (sound) and the English word sonny (my little son). This product line became so famous, they renamed the whole company, and the rest, as they say, is history.

So here we have one of the most famous names of a Japanese company, and not only is it coined, it cannot even be written in Kanji since it is not a Japanese word or name. Very, very few other Japanese old line brands are in this situation, but certainly some new ones are: Acura, Lexus for example - all coined by US naming agencies. Luckily the Japanese language is phonetic, so they can always be written phonetically. Since there are only two syllables in Sony, when you see their name in Japanese you will now understand why it is written as 2 characters - the Hiragana symbols for So and Nii.

Motto: When the child becomes more famous than the parent, rejoice!