Auto bahn

Toyota Yaris
Toyota blended German and Greek to invent the word Yaris. The Japanese firm explains Charis was a symbol of beauty and elegance in Greek mythology. Toyota’s marketing department could have stopped there but it replaced the first syllable with ya, the word for yes in German. Officially, it represents the reaction that designers hoped European buyers would have to the first-generation Yaris’ styling.

Nissan Qashqai
The Qashqai is a hot-selling SUV made by Nissan. Open an anthropology book and you’ll read the Qashqai are a migratory, Turkic-speaking people who live in the Zagros mountain in Iran. How the name ended up on the hatch of an SUV is anyone’s guess but the answer is likely something along the lines of “it sounded cool.”

In America, where buyers tend to dislike names that are difficult to pronounce, Nissan chose to ditch the Qashqai name and called the model Rogue Sport (pictured).