任天堂 – What does Nintendo mean?
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a company that made hanafuda which are Japanese playing cards. today though they are the well-known video gaming company that gave us such iconic characters as Mario and Luigi, and Link and Zelda. If you ever wondered thought to yourself, what does Nintendo mean you are in the right place.
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What does Nintendo mean?
The name Nintendo as far as I know was a pure creation when the company was founded. As far as I know, there is not any official definition of the name. Two theories are that it can form one of two Japanese proverbs. First, we have:
人事を尽くして天命を持つ
Do all that you can do and leave the rest to destiny
The second candidate is the following:
運を天に任せる
Leave to chance
Both of these definitions are not word-for-word. But the general idea is that we don’t know what is going to happen.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/Breaking down Nintendo Kanji-by-Kanji
The Kanji for Nintendo is 任天堂. If you look at the two proverbs above they both contain the 天 character. Also, the second one has the 任 Kanji.
So, the name Nintendo is kind of like an abbreviated version of these proverbs. Let’s take a look at the Kanji one by one.
任 – Assignment
任 is a character which means a job, role, task, or assignment, and so on. It is one character in such words as:
- 責任 – Responsibility
- 任務 – Mission
As a verb, we have the word 任せる. This verb means to entrust someone to do something or to leave some responsibility to someone. In the case of 任天堂, the 任 seems to mean 任せる. So, leaving the responsibility to heaven. Which is our next character.
天 – Heaven
Next, 天 means heaven or sky. Also, this Kanji is used in words referring to space, the weather, nature, or someone’s nature from birth. It is a pretty diverse word.
So, if we take the last character and make 任天 we have a new word. This is not a real word as we already know but it still has meaning. Let’s think of 天 in broader terms than just heaven and add in the idea of nature, the weather, and so on. Now, 天 is more of a word representing a contrast between what humans can control and what they can’t. What they can’t be heaven, nature, fate, or 天.
堂 – Hall
堂 is the last character. It can mean a hall or just some building or place where many people gather. In the word Nintendo, this would just represent the people to gather to create the company 任天堂.
