Just curious if anyone knows from whence the name comes. TIA

I just asked this question of my friend in Tokyo who's hosting me now, and he told me that it means "with color" or "colored", more or less. Japanese is a tough language, and there are surely other interpretations...

In the context of what seems to be Pilot's strategy of releasing the inks, it seems like each batch is a study in a certain color family, so maybe the word can take on that sort of "art-school" connotation as well.

If they release colors with the same number of variations as they have done with their first two batches, they will end up rivaling Noodlers and Private Reserve for sheer volume of colors. I'm looking forward to it!

The characters in order mean "colour" (iro), "paint/dye" (not pronounced here), and "drop" (shizuku), so you could interpret it as "Colour ink drops" (doesn't sound too poetic in English, does it).

But the way it's read as a compound leaves out the reading of one character completely, so I doubt most people would be able to read it as is (which explains why they also print the name in English), so I think it's an invented reading. From the reading it sounds like "colour drops" or "drops of colour" which is a bit more poetic; the reading of the character for "paint/dye" is completely left out of the pronunciation, though it adds nuance visually. It's also possible that this compound might be an archaic form; I'd have to look it up in my classical dictionary.

It's pretty common to play with the readings of Chinese characters in this way, especially for names of people and products.

A native speaker might have a different interpretation on this, however. Someone should buzz Taki and ask for her opinion.

Neill