任天堂

Orthographic borrowing from Japanese 任天堂 (Nintendō).

任天堂

1. Nintendo (Japanese video game company)

• 任地獄／任地狱 (Rèndìyù)

According to Hiroshi Yamauchi, the company name is derived from the phrase 運を天に任せる (un o ten ni makaseru, literally “leave luck to heaven”).^[1] However, there is currently no true evidence to validate this being the intended meaning despite several shared kanji,^[2] the name has no true meaning in contemporary Japanese,^[3] and, additionally, some Japanese businesses use poetic, oblique names that are based on a detail from the owner's life and have little to no meaning on their own, with the seemingly obvious definition of the kanji not necessarily applying to their meanings.

Another possible etymology is that the word 天 (ten, literally “heaven”) is the first character of 天狗 (tengu), a kind of monster in Japanese folklore which is sometimes connected to gambling and may therefore be a reference to the company’s initial product of hanafuda cards, thus yielding an interpretation of the company name as a “temple of trusted cards”.^[2] Evidence for this is that other hanafuda manufacturers of the era also used similar poetic tengu-based names not truly understandable to those who did not know criminal slang and that the association was widespread in Meiji era society.^[3][4]

Another possible etymology is that the character 任 (nin) refers to the designation ninkyo dantai, a name that yakuza groups have historically used to refer to themselves,^[2] with both this term and the tengu association being popular in 19th century Japan among yakuza.^[3]

The word 堂 (do, literally “temple”) likely refers to a common marketing strategy used by Japanese shopping businesses to add "prestige to their name."^[2]

One possible combined name interpretation could be "the valuable company of hanafuda gambling cards for yakuza." The name, however, has "always been ambiguous"^[3] and all of the kanji can technically be read as filler words about the quality of the business, along with other meanings entirely.

• (Tokyo) にんてんどー [nìńtéńdóó] (Heiban – [0])
• IPA^(key): [ɲ̟ĩntẽ̞ndo̞ː]

任(にん)天(てん)堂(どう) • (Nintendō) ^{←にんてんだう (Nintendau)?}

1. Nintendo (video game company)

• → Chinese: 任天堂 (Rèntiāntáng)
• → English: Nintendo
• → Spanish: nintendo

• ファミコン (Famikon)