Kia Motors America

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:51 AM, LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From their site:
>
> The word "Kia" is derived from the Chinese characters "ki", meaning to
> "arise or come up out of", and "a", referring to Asia.  So when put
> together, "Kia" means to "arise or come up out of Asia".
>
> Shit.  Another noun verbed.  I hate when people noun verbs.  On second
> thought it looks like a verb nouned.  Are there other cars with verbs
> as names?

For starters, there's Volvo (Lat. 'I roll') and Audi (Lat. 'Listen!').

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/classiccars.htm


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org