The coined abbreviated historic founders’ name of T O S H I B A Memory announced in April 2022 their brand name change to Kioxia.

Etymology

• The new name is a commingling of the parent manufacturing company’s home language of Japanese and Classical Greek, to form a smooth tone, a sleek unique global name that will ‘be heard above the herd’ of their competitors.
• K i o k u is Japanese meaning memory
• A x i a is Greek denoting value
• End result equals K I O X I A
• So how do we say it in Global English: Key-oh-koo-she-uh
• Spelled out in Japanese it’s キオクシア (My thanks goes to the pronunciation guidance from a resident Japanese speaking Naming Consultant colleague.)
• On their website, they have ニュース beneath the name. By merely looking at the graphic image of that word as a non-Japanese speaker I read it (with a tongue in cheek quip) as ‘equals 1 name from 2 words’.

Why the name change?

Damage limitation to a global name that incurred a massive financial disaster investment in the American nuclear reactor industry and as a result, suffered a tarnished brand image.

Now Toshiba has a complex infrastructure and a nightmare of a headache to bring all their global companies of varying names from creation or from mergers and amalgamations to all fall inline under the new and I’m sure what is going to be an eye-opener of a strong, unified umbrella shouting out Kioxia.

One of the European companies to undergo a radical name change is OCZ Storage Solutions Ltd in the UK. The OCZ part of the name flies out of American parentage originally. Yet the ‘Storage Solutions’ is very generic and to someone not in the know, it could imply any kind of general storage and not necessarily Memory. Thus, metamorphosis has seen Kioxia Technology UK Ltd emerge.

On the continent, the formerly Toshiba Memory Europe GMBH embraced their new name as Kioxia Europe GMBH

Product Branding Architecture.

The innovative new-look corporate logo of a silver Kioxia is refreshing – encircling cleverly the different and individual product colours of magenta, light green, orange, yellow, white the light blue, and black writing enhances the final touches of the brand image “Communication colours.”

The reasoning behind the colour branding is to make them highly recognizable and customer friendly so they can select and recall quickly the right product for their specific memory application solutions.

Kioxia Aim

The heritage foundations of the mature Toshiba still exists but this progressive memory technology is the new growth and the core creating uplifting choice experiences to be the world leader of ever-evolving Memory.

Under Covid-19 Conditions

More and more people are being forced under Covid-19 virus lockdown restrictions to stay safe at home and need to continue work online remotely from their normal workplace. They need a product that is reliable for their comprehensive Memory Portfolio.

Kioxia is so dedicated to expanding their new brand and customer needs they have continued manufacturing at two plants in Japan: Yokkaichi Plant and Kitakama Plant even while the Japanese government extended the State of Emergency across the whole country.

October 2019 they formally altered the company name but all the marketing and opening out globally was planned for April 2020, and they tried not to succumb to the Covid-19 pandemic as a deterrent to their evolving new Memory businesses. Yet their care and safety to those employees on the production lines have been increased, monitored, tested, and is paramount to the Corporation of Kioxia.

(C) 2020 Brighter Naming and Rosie Reay: Naming Alphabet Soup 101