From Polo to T-Roc: The weird and wonderful world of Volkswagen names

[MUSIC] [SOUND] Naming cars is really, really hard. Because once a manufacturer's chosen a name, they've got to stick it on the back of that motor for however long it's on the market. Sometimes that can go a little bit wrong, most famously the MR2 in France. Translates it as ML deux, which means poo. And more recently, the high end Kona, well, in Portugal it's not called the Kona because basically, Kona means C bomb. [BLEEP] And you don't wanna be driving around In a car, with that one the back of it. Something though it goes very right, for example, citron in France, they called the DS, the DS, which means goddess. So that's a bit of a win. Now a lot of people wonder about VW's name in conventions, and they're actually pretty cool what if I quite, and they all use to be about wins. So, The Golf, for example, is named after the Gulf Stream. The Jetta, the jet stream. The Bora after one of two winds in the Balkans. The Passat is named after trade winds. These are German translations. And this, the little Polo, well, that's named after polar winds. So it's not just a mint with a hole that's all chilly and what have you. And the Scirocco is named after a hurricane. [UNKNOWN] [BLANK_AUDIO] VW hasn't just stuck to the whole winds thing, no, over the years they've played a little bit. So for example, the Eos, Phaethon and the Atlas all have their roots in mythology. Atlas, being of course the chap who had to hold up the world, Eos, the goddess of the Dawn, and Phaethon Was, well he was in charge of the chariot that run to the sun, from one bit of the sky to the other but he almost lost control of it, which is a little foolish [UNKNOWN] on, come on. The Touareg, that's named after a nomadic people in the Sahara desert. The Arteon, that is derived from Latin, artem art, There are other little streams as well. For example, the Amarock is based off the Inuit word for wolf and the Looper. Remember the little Looper, loved the little Looper. Well that gets its origins from the Latin version of the same name. There are of course some odd ones in there for example. The CC stands for comfort coupe. The T-Roc, well, I was looking into this and I found a piece online where a journalist asked a VW representative what T-Roc meant, what the meaning behind it was. And the journalist was told the T was because that's how All the other kind of SUVs in the lineup start with a T and then Rock, a derivation of rock but also because it rocks its segment. Yeah. And of course Up is just, it's up. There's nothing you can derive that from. It just means Means up. Up. Anyway, I can go on listing these things all day and I would've fallen down a big research hole and not got any major work done. But when you think about it, there's more to just a little name than well Just a little lame. There's meaning and thought behind these things. And that's pretty cool. [SOUND]