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| Toyota Logos |
Actually the spelling of Toyoda in the first logo is correct. The other two are technically “wrong”. Toyota was founded by Sakichi Toyoda (born 1867). His name is spelled with a “da”. It was changed later for reasons I will discuss below. In 1900, when Japan started to industrialize, Sakichi Toyoda was making looming machines that accomplished the difficult task of weaving thread into cloth. They did not start making cars until the 1930’s.
In the early 1900’s it must have been very progressive to write your company’s name in “Romaji”. Especially when that company’s name is using your own family name, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. Romaji, (literally; “Roman”, “ji”-letters) is when in Japanese, you use the Roman ABC’s to spell out words. It is very common in today’s Japan, but at the time must have been very forward thinking. Keep in mind that when Mr. Toyoda would write his name, he would write it in Kanji, the character based Japanese alphabet (sample of name below). He also had two other ways to write it in Japanese, Hiragana and Katakana (also seen below). He chose to write the company logo in Romaji.
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| Roman Logo |
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