Kozoru.com: Next-gen search?
Why are non-Japanese people fascinated with Japanese nouns? I don't get it. Is it more of an issue that English-language nouns are all taken? Why not Chinese? Or Arabic? Why Japanese?
Kozoru.com: Next-gen search?
Why are non-Japanese people fascinated with Japanese nouns? I don't get it. Is it more of an issue that English-language nouns are all taken? Why not Chinese? Or Arabic? Why Japanese?
> Why not Chinese? Or Arabic? Why Japanese?
I'm just guessing but there is tons of Japanese influence in the West from video games (Street fighter, Tekken, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy) to anime (Sailor Moon, Gundam, Dragon Ball) to comics to cartoons and other kids shows (Pokemon, Yugioh, Digimon, Power Rangers) and of course all the gadgets from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Epson, etc. No other culture would seem to have as nearly the influence on the West as Japan.
Hey gen,
Our founder decided to go with kozoru because the word really hadn't been used in a long time, even in Japan (to our knowledge). Also, before our company started, you could search for "kozoru" in any of the major search engines and not find anything. Now when you search, anything that has to do with kozoru usually links back to our name.
Another reason you flat out guessed right, which is most of the English words are already taken. And if you want to have a domain like become.com or gather.com, you're going to have to pay a lot up front for it. Why not introduce a word from a different language into the conversation? It's nearly always a talking point.
And one last reason is if you look closely, there are some fun little things about the name that have to do with where we're located.
Thanks for the link!
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well, I tried "kozoru" in every romaji variation I could think of with my various dictionaries and couldn't find it, but good ol' WWWJDIC has it (挙る）.
Re: Japanese names, is there a trend recently? At any rate, doesn't seem very surprising, but I think it's just the flavor of the month, the same way a few years ago Hawaiian was the flavor (Akamai, Wiki, etc.). And I would agree with Greggman that Japan(ese) will, for better or worse, always have a cache of cool on which to draw on....That said, now it probably would seem weird for a Chinese or Arabic name to be used, but all it takes is one or two companies to do so and then you'd probably see a host. (Although in all honesty I can't see any VC worth his/her salt giving an OK to an Arabic company name, at the moment anyway).
Superficially Japanese has a regular pronounciation and a rhythmic quality. English speakers can read it and will typically pronounce it the same way. Japanese words are also fun to say. Niko niko, wagamama, butaniku... need I say more? But I do agree with you that this name is a bit bizarre.
Perhaps they should try the old .com trick of combining a color and a noun ala "blue martini" - say something like "brown watermelon"...
Of course, there is no end to the use of English words in Japan so I won't get started there. :-)
You have a great site here by the way.