32 Car Name Meanings - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.203)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

And did you know that Hyundai means the present age or modernity in Korean

But the brand's car names aren't exclusively in Korean. For example, the T-Baron sports car is Spanish for shark

And who could forget about the Hyundai pony, which is English for pony. Anyway, those are the first two of many car name meanings I'm going to share with you today

By the way, I'm going to tell you about both car brand names and car model names, so you can sound like a real expert

Alright, let's do this. Volkswagen is German for people's car. In the 1930s, it was actually Hitler who commissioned

Ferdinand Porsche, yes that Porsche, to build the first Volkswagen, which we now know as

the Beetle. Back then, it was called the Strength Through Joy car, but KDF was its German abbreviation

The KDF was a Nazi program, so after World War II, the car started to be called by its

nickname, the Beetle, but it is formally known as the Volkswagen Type 1

How's that for catchy? While I'm talking about Volkswagen, by the way, in German, Passat means trade wind and

Jetta means jet stream. Toyota was founded by a man named Sakichi Toyoda with a D, not a T. Why the letters switch

Well, it's a little confusing since we're dealing with translations here, but a representative

for the company explained that the change had to do with, quote, the number of strokes

to write Toyota in Japanese, eight. And that's important because eight is a lucky number in Japanese culture

Speaking of Toyota, since the Toyota Crown launched in 1955, Toyota has been using similar

names for other cars, like the Corolla is named after a word for an ancient crown, and

Camry comes from the Japanese word for little crown. Wonder Woman has an idea for a Toyota, the Toyota Tiara

It's alliterative. Unrelated, but Prius is Latin for to go before, which the company chose because the car was

available before, you know, like hybrids were a big deal. It's like a hipster hybrid

Side note in 2011 Toyota invited the public to determine the plural of Prius and voters landed on Pri Nissan came from another company Nipponsangya which translates to Japan Industries The first sounds of those two words were combined to give us Nissan

And if you've ever wondered why Nissan's luxury line, the Infinity, has an I on the

end instead of a Y, you're going to have to keep wondering because the Infinity website

states that the name was chosen in 1987 because the four I's were considered a, quote, fresh spelling

Chevrolet is named after its founder, Louis Chevrolet. So let's talk about something a little more interesting, the Camaro

So in the 1960s, representatives at Chevrolet claimed that Camaro was a French word for

comrade, but it's not. Now, we may never know where the name Camaro truly came from, but we do know that at a

press conference, a reporter asked a company rep what the word meant, and the rep replied

that a Camaro is, quote, a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs

Anyway, the Corvette is a little less ambiguous. It's named after a kind of warship

Mercedes-Benz is a combination of two things, the Benz patent motor wagon and the Mercedes car

So in 1886, Carl Benz invented the first automobile, the Benz patent motor wagon

Then in the early 1900s, a company called DMG also invented a car, the Mercedes, named after the daughter of board member Emil Jelenic

In 1926, the two parties merged into one company, Daimler-Benz. It was originally named for DMG founder Gottlieb Daimler, but quickly switched to the much catchier Mercedes-Benz

Hard out there for a Gottlieb. No one knows for sure where the word Jeep came from, but most believe it actually came from the initials GP

which can mean either governmental purpose or general purpose. By the 40s, the word Jeep had come to mean any car that the military used with four-wheel drive

The trademark for the actual brand name was acquired in the 50s. By the way, Jeep is owned by Chrysler, which was named after founder Walter P. Chrysler

who, by the way, is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Yes, that Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, along with tons of Rockefellers and Carnegies

You can't take it with you, my friends, but if you could, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery would be the most hopping, resting place on Earth

The Aston Martin Company had two founders Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford So now you know where the Martin came from As for the Aston it actually a reference to a place Aston Hill in Buckinghamshire England where Lionel Martin used to race cars

It was these races that actually inspired Lionel and Robert to start building cars of

their own in 1914 because, you know, they wanted to win the races

Miss Piggy must be driving an Aston Martin because she's beating that fraggle in his car

Another car company named after a place is Pontiac. The name actually dates back to the late 1800s when the Pontiac Spring and Wagon Works Company

was doing great business in the city of Pontiac, Michigan. Now, of course, they're no longer in the wagon works business

They're also no longer in the car business. In the early 1900s, August Horch was squeezed out of his own car company called Horch

It was like an Eduardo from the Social Network situation, or the real-life guy who that happened

to with actual Facebook. Anyway, he ended up starting his own new car company, and this time, smartly, he didn't

call it Horch, he called it Audi. But he still kind of named it after himself because the name Horch is similar to the German word for listen

so he picked a name meaning listen in Latin. Speaking of which, Volvo means I roll in Latin

Saab Group is a Swedish company that develops aircrafts, but in the 1940s they decided they wanted to get in the car business

which is why we now know them best as a car brand. But weirdly enough, the name Saab actually originates from the Swedish words for Swedish airplane company

Svenska Aeroplan AB, which is abbreviated to Saab. Basically, when you buy a Saab, you're buying a plane. A really unreliable plane

Sorry, Saab. Did they sponsor this video? No? Alright, we're good. The constellation Pleiades is a cluster of stars that's also part of the Taurus constellation

In Japanese, the word for Pleiades is Subaru. The Subaru logo of six stars is also an allusion to that constellation

There are actually a few car names that are acronyms. I already told you about the Bavarian Motor Works in our acronyms episode

but did you know that the Italian company Alfa Romeo comes from an acronym for the Italian words

for Lombard Automobile Factory Public Company? And the name of its founder, Nicola Romeo

and we have Alfa Romeo Fiat now owns that company which is also an Italian acronym meaning Italian Automobile Factory of Turin Now of course we all know who Henry Ford is innovator captain of industry virulent anti

but I'm going to finish up with a few other brands named after people. We have founders like Soichiro Honda, David Buick, Ferruccio Lamborghini, and, of course, Enzo Ferrari

And then there are the combinations of names. Frederick Henry Royce and Charles Stewart Rolls gave us the Rolls-Royce

His name was Rolls. It was inevitable that he was going to get in the car business

And a gentle reminder to our Japanese and or Italian viewers, mispronouncing things is my thing

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that the Cadillac is named after Detroit founder and former Louisiana governor Antoine Lame de la Motte, Sir de Cadillac

And yes, I did have three years of high school French. In fact, the famous Cadillac logo is based on his family's coat of arms

Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube which is made with the help of all of these nice people. Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions, and this week's question comes from Richard Luciano who asks

What is the original method and date of making popcorn anyway? Well Richard, popcorn goes back so far in time that it's hard to tell

Like, we know that popcorn was being eaten in ancient Peru, maybe even as early as 4700 BCE

I mean that was before people had ceramic pots, so they probably just roasted corn cobs over fire

But on the upside, they didn't have to go to the movies and pay $17.50 for a small popcorn

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