Kwannon and Canon

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

In the early 1930s, the market for high-end 35mm cameras was dominated by the German manufacturers.

And then a movie camera repairman in Tokyo named Goro Yoshida took apart one of those expensive German models to see how it worked.

And he realized that he could build a much less expensive version.

So he built a prototype.

As it happens, Yoshida was a devout Buddhist, and he actually named this camera prototype after the Buddhist goddess of mercy.

And in Japanese, the name of that benevolent spirit was Kwanon.

Spelled in English, it’s K-W-A-N-O-N, Kwanon.

And the name derives from these words that mean perceiving the sounds or the cries of the world.

Isn’t that something?

So did that become what I think it became?

Did it become canon?

Yeah.

Oh, did it? Yeah.

Yes, it did.

Oh.

It did.

Yeah, the Japanese company originally advertised it as Quanon,

And the camera’s logo featured this image of that merciful deity with lots of arms surrounded by a ring of fire.

As they started to produce the cameras on a larger scale,

They decided to tweak the name, and they changed it from Quanon to Canon.

Canon, right, and they get a lot of different associations with that in English and similar languages.

Right, Canon meaning a standard.

That’s cool.

Yeah, I always thought they were called Canon cameras because they had those long lenses.

But isn’t that a trip that a Buddhist goddess of mercy would?

Yeah, she’s looking over our photos, making sure that they’re good, making sure that nobody’s eyes are closed.

Swiping through.

I love these brand name stories.

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