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Me and my homies watching the eclipse😂

Toyota Yaris
Toyota blended German and Greek to invent the word Yaris. The Japanese firm explains Charis was a symbol of beauty and elegance in Greek mythology. Toyota’s marketing department could have stopped there but it replaced the first syllable with ya, the word for yes in German. Officially, it represents the reaction that designers hoped European buyers would have to the first-generation Yaris’ styling.

Toyota RAV4
Toyota designed the original RAV4 before the term SUV became widely known so it had to come up with its own name. RAV4 means recreational active vehicle with four-wheel drive, though the model comes standard with front-wheel drive in most markets.

Toyota Corolla
You won’t find a picture of a humble economy car if you look up the word corolla in the dictionary. Instead, it’s a noun defined as “the petals of a flower, typically forming a whorl within the sepals.” It’s a term commonly used by botanists

Tesla’s first car was quite simply called Roadster. The California-based company then launched a new naming system when it introduced the Model S (pictured). It later released the Model X, the Model 3 and Model Y. SX3Y, then.

Tesla originally wanted to name its entry-level car Model E but Ford threatened to sue because it owned the rights to that name. Replace 3 with E and re-arrange the letters in Tesla’s line-up to discover what the company’s naming system leads to

Renault Twingo
Renault began moving away from numerical nameplates when it introduced the Clio in 1990. The revamped naming system marked the beginning of a new era for the firm. Its marketing department came up with the name Twingo for the entry-level model presented in 1993. The name is a combination of three dance styles: twist, swing and tango.

Porsche 911
Flashbulbs popped as Porsche introduced the brand-new 901 at the 1963 Frankfurt auto show. Sleek and powerful, the 356’s long-awaited successor made headlines all around the world but it caught the attention of Peugeot for a completely different reason. The French firm swiftly reminded Porsche that it owned the rights to every three-digit car nameplate with a zero in the middle. And, though it didn’t plan on releasing a model named 901 and it certainly had no intention of building a rear-engined sports car, it wasn’t about to let Porsche get away with trademark infringement.

Porsche replaced the zero with a one to create the 911. It made about 82 901-badged pre-production cars before changing the car’s name. It's fair to say the 911 hasn't looked back.

Peugeot’s three-digit nameplates
Peugeot began using three-digit nameplates with a zero in the middle when it introduced the 201 in 1929. The model was quickly joined in showrooms by three additional new cars named 301, 401 and 601, respectively. On some of them, the emblem was placed on the grille and the zero doubled as the hole for the crank. It was a clever solution that designers were proud of so Peugeot continued using it.

The three-digit naming system outlived the crank. The numbers stopped evolving in 2012; the 208 (pictured) was replaced by another 208, not by a 209. Peugeot has occasionally made an exception to its rule for models like the P4, the 1007 and the RCZ. In 2018, the firm uses two zeros to denote SUVs like the 3008.

Nissan Qashqai
The Qashqai is a hot-selling SUV made by Nissan. Open an anthropology book and you’ll read the Qashqai are a migratory, Turkic-speaking people who live in the Zagros mountain in Iran. How the name ended up on the hatch of an SUV is anyone’s guess but the answer is likely something along the lines of “it sounded cool.”

In America, where buyers tend to dislike names that are difficult to pronounce, Nissan chose to ditch the Qashqai name and called the model Rogue Sport (pictured).