Is there any reason to use the word uchu? It seems like almost everything (colour schemes, AI models, startups, tools, apps, ...) is named using a single randomly-selected Japanese word these days. But... why?
replies(16):
About a year ago I embarked on creating a color scheme for a project and I loved it so much I began using it for everything. I decided to make an official repo for it to share with the world.
Anyhoo, hope y'all enjoy it.
It seems very odd to me that somebody would complain about single-word product names. Or are you complaining about the origin language? Or are you just jealous that somebody is using a two-syllable word instead of something like Navigator? Or perhaps you are peeved it isn't a single-syllable name like Chrome. Is a word like Ubuntu ok if it isn't Japanese? Or do you mean that words like Twitter and Yahoo should be phased out and everything should just be a single letter like X?
> Or do you mean that words like Twitter and Yahoo should be phased out and everything should just be a single letter like X?
Yes. Apart from my children, who will be named things like X Æ A-Xii.
As for the first: there isn’t a silly trend of naming everything after randomly-chosen German words, so at least it’s fairly original.
I would have thought that the explanation for the phenomenon you highlight is obvious: there is a strong current of Japanophilia in U.S. culture generally, and especially among the tech-minded. So, while people borrow words from languages around the globe, Japanese is especially well represented. I'm surprised people seem reluctant to acknowledge this.
Edit: German is another interesting example. Though perhaps among different people and different reasons, English speakers (at least Americans) do also seem to have a special fondness for German words. Gestalt, zeitgeist, schadenfreude, ersatz, etc. For me, these are evocative of the golden age of German-language science and philosophy running roughly from Kant through Jung. For product names, though, German words may tend to be a bit too long and challenging to pronounce for an Anglophone audience. Perhaps this highlights another reason for the popularity of Japanese for this purpose: in addition to providing a pool of 'cool' sounding words without preexisting connotations for English speakers, Japanese seems to have an abundance of short words that an English speaker may find easily pronounceable. (Not to say that the words are necessarily pronounces correctly from the perspective of a Japanese speaker.)