Hilux to Hyrax?

April 4, 2024 4:16 PM

You may be aware of the Hilux, a Toyota small truck line dating back to the '60s. Perhaps you also know of the hyrax, a small furry animal native to Africa. Is the first named after the second? Apparently not! But help me change history.

I only ask because recently I have seen a lot of excitement on Instagram among Japanese enthusiasts of hyraxes, of which there is a lovely family at a zoo in Osaka (to be completely honest, my feed is mostly these creatures now). And I was recently reminded of the existence of the Hilux.

The two words collided in my brain - similar except for the r/l switch, a common hiccup in Japanese localizations of foreign words. I thought perhaps a hyrax-loving Toyota executive might have named their compact, rugged truck after these compact, rugged animals. But the official Toyota history of the Hilux says the name actually is just a combination of "high" and "luxury."

But the Hilux is not a high luxury vehicle. It's a small, utilitarian truck! No luxury to be found!

Then I noticed...

The Japanese characters for the truck are..... ハイラックス
The Japanese characters for the animal are... ハイラックス

They are the same! The truck name is rendered in our alphabet as Hilux and the creature name as Hyrax. But with the same characters in Japanese, they appear to be the same word.

Now, I don't know if homonyms function the same in Japanese as they do in English (I think it's actually more common that the same word can be written multiple ways). But the etymology of the Hilux seems suspect to me.

Why "high luxury" out of nowhere for a small truck that is not luxurious? It feels way more likely to me that back in 1968, someone proposed the hardy, rock-dwelling ハイラックス as an apropos name for their new compact truck — a unique and interesting moniker like other animal-type car names (Panda, Rabbit, Impala, Mustang etc). Perhaps a manager thought it was great and they went with it, but their international marketing team thought it ridiculous (and the animals are, really) after the fact and concocted this totally not apropos English portmanteau for it. This became the new official history and the weird furry creature it was actually named after was forgotten.

That's my hypothesis, and I would love to find some way to confirm or nullify it!

posted by BlackLeotardFront to Writing & Language (9 answers total)

Toyota’s Japanese-language web site gives the same “High + Luxury” explanation as the English site.
posted by mbrubeck at 5:00 PM on April 4

As far as utility vehicles go (aka utes), the hilux was positioned as the high end ute for those that bought utes.
posted by Thella at 6:40 PM on April 4

In the sixties luxury was attached to pickups when they had luxobarge like features like carpet, padded headliners or wood trim on the arm rest. IE: the segment was utilitarian in the extreme and therefore the bar to be considered luxury was extremely low.
posted by Mitheral at 9:45 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

This youtuber agrees with the Hairakkusu name origin.

Google translate has:
(English) Hyrax > (Japanese) Hairakkusu
(Japanese) Hairakkusu > (English) Hilux

I can imagine a meeting in 1968 where the Japanese designer gave the name as Hyrax and an english-speaking marketing person assumes that must be a Japanese accent (there is no L sound in Japanese) and writes down HiLux.
posted by Lanark at 4:38 AM on April 5 [1 favorite]

Let’s not go too far into this thread without some video of a Hyrax family. Toyota Hilux and Land-cruiser vehicles have been popular in hyrax country since their release - but I think you would need proof that someone on the Toyota board knew anything about a fairly obscure African animal.
posted by rongorongo at 9:06 AM on April 5

I think you're severely overestimating the amount of awareness in the public consciousness around hyraxes, past and present. I was literally introduced to them by this question, and I feel reasonably curious about the natural world. I can't see any reason they'd base a truck name on an obscure African mammal that, while cute, doesn't really seem like a marketable mascot for a truck. I'd be incredibly surprised if they even knew about hyraxes when they came up with the branding, to be honest.

Hilux = high luxury just seems far more likely, the above-linked youtuber's unsourced claim aside. The fact that it's also the official story means alternative explanations would need a pretty high bar of evidence in my mind.
posted by Aleyn at 11:23 AM on April 5

I'm with those saying this is most likely just a cute coincidence. Japanese has a lot of homophones, in part because they have a relatively small number of phonemes. This can especially mean that when they borrow words from other languages that have more phonemes (like English, or Chinese, and they've borrowed a lot of words from both), distinctions can get collapsed. クラブ (kurabu) means club, but it also means crab. Hilux/hyrax might be similar.
posted by canisbonusest at 7:16 PM on April 5 [1 favorite]

Creating “hilux” from “high luxury” is also extremely typical of Japanese, the language that brought us:

• pasokon (personal computer)
• torejo (Trader Joe’s)
• patokā (patrol car)
• famiresu (family restaurant)
• sumaho (smart phone)
• rimokon (remote control)

posted by mbrubeck at 6:13 PM on April 6 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I will still believe in my hyrax headcanon. But I thank you all for this extra information and look forward to proving everyone wrong when Toyota confirms it!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:22 PM on April 17