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Akai - The word "Akai" means the colour red in Japanese. As you may already know, Japan is widely known as the 'land of the rising sun', as it is the eastern-most country and the sun rises there first. The colour red is associated with that of the rising Sun as seen in the red round at the center of the Japanese flag. Akai was therefore named so to convey that it is very much a Japanese company.

Blaupunkt - Blaupunkt literally means blue point or blue dot in German. Initially named Ideal, this company specialized in headphones, and those headphones that passed the quality test were marked with a small sticker with a blue dot. This symbol of quality was later made a trademark and the trademark was adopted as the name of the company - Blaupunkt.

Canon - Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory was the initial name of this company when it was founded by Takeshi Matarai, Goro Toshida, Saburo Uchida and Takeo Maeda. Their first product was Japan's first 35mm focal plane-shutter camera known as the Kwannon, which means the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy in the Japanese language. This name was twisted a bit by the company to rechristen it as Canon Inc.

Casio - Founded in April 1946, Casio was named after its founder Tadao Kashio, who was an engineer specializing in fabrication.

Compaq - Compaq is said to be derived from "Compatibility and Quality", of which the compatibility meant that these were IBM compatible.

Epson - Originally known as Daiwa Kogyo Ltd., this company was founded in 1942 by Hisao Yamazaki to manufacture watch parts in Suwa, Nagano. The name Epson has a very interesting story of its origin. This company was known as Shinshu Seiki in 1968 when it launched its first mini-printer known as EP-101, where EP meant Electronic Printer. In June 1975, the second generation of printer from this company was released and it was then when it came to be known as "Son of EP-101", which became "Son of EP", which yet again became "Epson".

Hitachi - The word Hitachi literally means sunrise in Japanese. Since Japan is known as the 'land of the rising sun', the name was adopted by the company to convey a sense of being in sync with the Japanese culture.

Lenovo - The company was originally named Legend, but they had to change it to Lenovo because it was already a registered trademark in the West. "Lenovo" is a blend of two words "Le" from Legend and "novo", which is pseudo-Latin for new.

LG - LG is a combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky (from Lak-Hui Chemical Industrial Corp, which was a plastics manufacturing company) and Goldstar (from Goldstar Co. Ltd., which was an electronics company). To be able to compete in the American market, this amalgamation of companies was named as LG in 1995, even though it has been popularly suggested by the company that it is associated with its tagline "Life's Good".

Mitsubishi - Established as a fishing firm in 1870, this company was renamed to Mitsubishi Shokao in 1873. The name Mitsubishi consists of two parts - "mitsu" meaning three and "hishi" (becoming "bishi" when the words combined) meaning water caltrop. This is also the reason why the logo of the company is shaped similar to this - three rhombus shapes with their vertices meeting at the center.

Nikon - This company was founded in 1917. The original name of this company was Nippon Kogaku Kogyo Kabushiki-gaisha meaning Japan Optical Industries Corporation. It was renamed in 1988 to Nikon Corporation after its highly successful and famous camera brand.

Nintendo - According to Nintendo's Touch! Generations website, the name "Nintendo" translated from Japanese to English means "Leave luck to Heaven". Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889, originally named "Nintendo Koppai". Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon became popular, and Yamauchi hired assistants to mass produce cards to satisfy demand. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and organizes its own contract bridge tournament called the "Nintendo Cup".

Panasonic - While this company adopted the name National in 1927, it marketed its audio equipment under the brand name PanaSonic. In May 2003, the company made Panasonic its global brand with the slogan Panasonic ideas for life. The company then slowly began the process of unifying its brands to Panasonic and by March 2004 replaced National for products and outdoor signboards completely, with the exception of those in Japan. Finally, on January 10, 2008, it was announced that it would change its name to Panasonic Corporation. The name change was approved by the shareholders on June 26, 2008.

Samsung - The word Samsung means three stars in Korean. The Samsung Group mainly consists of three main companies - Samsung Electronics, Samsung Heavy Industries and Samsung C&T. These three companies, among a host of other minor companies, are considered as the three stars of this conglomerate and that is reflected in the name of the group.

Sanyo - The word Sanyo means three oceans in Japanese. It was the vision of the founder of this company to sell their products worldwide, mainly across the three main oceans that surround Japan - Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. It was this vision that led to this company being named Sanyo.

Seiko - Seiko is the Japanese word for exquisite, minute, or success, which reflects this company's motto.

Sharp - When this company started, their first product was an ever-sharp pencil. The company took the name Sharp from this product it manufactured. Although this pencil producing company got destroyed in the devastating Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, the company retained the name when it moved onto other businesses including electronics.

Toshiba - Toshiba is an amalgamation of two companies and there lies the root of its name. The first company was Shibaura Seisakusho, which was one of the major heavy electrical machinery manufacturer in early 20th century Japan that established Japan as a major world industrial power prior to the First World War. The second company was Tokyo Denki, which was into manufacturing electrical and consumer products. The two amalgamated in 1939 to create the new company Tokyo Shinbaura Denki, also soon coming to be known by the shorter and more convenient name Toshiba. Yet it was not until 1978 that the name Toshiba Corporation was officially adopted.