Kia to Lexus, How Car Companies Got Their Names
Companies Kia, Lincoln, and Lexus have interesting backstories behind both their names and how they originated.
Written by Serena Aburahma
Reviewed by Kathleen Flear
Naming a
car brand
is important to manufacturers for the same reason that there are a ton of car commercials in the Super Bowl
. It helps you move cars.This leads to some pretty cool brand names and some brand names with interesting origins. Here are a few of the best.
Kia rises
AAA
says that Kia is Korea's oldest car manufacturing company. There wasn't any reason to get fancy as the first one in the field, so they used only two characters.The first character transliterates in English to "Ki." This means "to rise from."
The second character transliterates in English to "A." This refers to East Asia. Together, the name means "to rise from East Asia."
As the country's oldest car manufacturer, it has done its best to represent Korea's engineering. These days the company is doing things like unveiling its concept car the
EV9,
which is a car that may come out in 2024. This car is supposed to have a range of 300 miles and be able to charge quickly with 350-kW DC charger. Their current EV is the EV6, and has a similar range as the concept car.
Kia has to continue to differentiate themselves because other companies in Korea make cars now, and these companies have more exciting names. Hyundai, for instance, is formed from the characters for "modern day."
Lincoln gets a company and a car
Henry Leland was a Detroit machinist who rescued Ford's failed second business. When the company asked him to assess the company's assets, Leland convinced them to create the Cadillac instead.
In 1917, before he saved Cadillac, he founded a car company with his son. They called it the Lincoln Motor Company.
They picked this name because the 16th president was a hero to Henry Leland. He had even been the first president for whom Leland voted.
Lincoln Motor Company did not do well in the long run. Ford's third company, the successful Ford Motor Company, bought them out when they ran into trouble. These days, Lincoln is a Ford line that does things like present concept cars with
watch companies
.How did Lexus get its name?
Toyota, a company named after its founding family, has many everyday cars, but, back in the 1980s, it wanted to start a line of vehicles that were more high-end.
Toyota could handle the engineering of luxury cars, but it decided to outsource branding to a marketing firm. The marketing company generated a list of 200 names from which to choose.
"Lexus" wasn't on the list. However, the most popular suggestion from the marketing company was "Alexis." Toyota seems to have tweaked that top pick.
It isn't clear why they changed it the way they did. One theory is that they took it as a combination of the words "luxury" and "elegance."
The more unique theory is that it is an acronym for "luxury exports to the U.S." The Toyota company merely says that they thought the name they created represented luxury and high-end technology.
Your car needs insurance whatever the name
While the history of a name is interesting, it isn't easy to track. Fortunately, the way to get cheap insurance doesn't involve knowing brand name trivia.
It involves comparison shopping, and
Jerry
is the app to automate that process. It compares policies from big-name insurance companies and presents you with what it finds. It even checks for better deals when it’s time to renew your policy, so you can use the app with confidence.
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