In 1936, Kiichiro Toyoda built an automobile company from a business that manufactured textile looms. Both firms were named after his surname. We've always wondered: Why the change from "d" to "t"?

When Toyoda decided to start building cars, he needed a name for his new venture. His first business, the humbly named Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd., was founded in 1926 by his father, Sakichi Toyoda. Keeping with tradition, he decided to name his car company in the same fashion.

In order to drum up publicity, Toyoda held a contest to establish a logo for his new venture. Twenty-seven thousand people answered the call.
The winning design consisted of the word "Toyota" — no "d" — depicted in a stylized form of the Japanese katakana alphabet. The Model AA, shown above, was Toyota's first passenger car, and it became the first car to bear the new name and logo.

The change had a few advantages: "Toyota" offers a softer final syllable than "Toyoda," and it rolls off the tongue better for us 'mericans. Writing it in katakana takes eight brushstrokes instead of the d-word's ten, which was also fortuitous — eight is considered a lucky number in Japan, and the character's shape symbolizes future growth and prosperity. A theory also exists that the adjusted spelling served to insulate the car company from the loom manufacturer; if the car firm were to have failed, the thinking goes, the older corporation would have avoided damage. Lastly, the new name represented a convenient break from Japan's agricultural past: "Toyoda" means "fertile rice fields" in Japanese.

Although the original logo was gradually phased out of export use — American-market Toyotas moved to a simple, roman-type badge and then a stylized "T" — it was retained for the Japanese market. It still adorns the Toyota Motor Company's head office in Aichi.

[Detroit News and Toyota.co.jp]