In 1918, the Namiki Manufacturing Company was founded. Then in 1938, the company name changed to Pilot Pen Co. Only the fact of the name change has been stated on Pilot's website and in Wikipedia, not the reason for it. Does anyone know why?

"Namiki" is a Japanese name, so perhaps the executives of that company saw an advantage in choosing a western name for easier acceptance outside of Asia. I'm sure they recognized one of their key competitors name, Sailor, and wondered what they could choose that would be western and evoke a superior image. By the very nature of occupation, a pilot is more prestigious than a sailor. So I wonder if that was part of the reason why Namiki changed their name to Pilot.

Any thoughts or evidence on this?

IIRC, the company was called Namiki because that was the name of the founder but they had used the word Pilot as a trade name of one of their earliest pens. They changed the name when Namiki retired and the company went public, I guess they droped the name of the founder since he was no longer involved but chose to use a name that was still synonimous with the pen company as they may have had a brand as manufacturers of the "Pilot pen".

I have no idea whether this was to appeal to Western markets - did Namiki sell their "Pilot" brand pens outside of Japan? What is an equally interesting question and probably related is, "why did Namiki chose to name their pen the Pilot Pen and not something Japanese?"

From the pilot website:


Looks like they were using the name Pilot 8 years before they started international businesses.

Personally, I prefer sailors to pilots...

Pilot official history page in Japanese says their company name means a maritime pilot. That's why their company symbol depicts a lifesaver.



According to Japanese Wiki on Pilot Corporation, the founder of Pilot, Ryosuke Namiki, graduated from and taught at Tokyo Merchant Marine Academy (current Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology). He was once a crew of a merchant ship, too. He used to use drawing pens while aboard, but did not like those pens and developed a pen that was more convenient (unfortunately the site does not elaborate on what kind of pen it was). He named his pen "Pilot Pen" and asked his wealthy former classmate Masao Wada to invest in the company and they founded Namiki Seisakusho together.

The official site also says that they are the leader of the big group of ships Therefore they are ahead of sailors, I guess

While I was searching Ryosuke Namiki, I found this Taiwanese blog...the author has visited Pilot Pen Station, and took a lot of photos. About half way down there are portraits of Wada (on the left, gray hair) and Namiki (on the right, dark hair). Very nice blog! Woody, do they have the original Pilot pen at Pen Station?

EDIT: Added some links.

Thanks for the info, Siv & Taki. It's fascinating... this suggests that Sailor did have an influence on Mr. Namiki, also following a maritime inspiration. It does seem logical for the name shift from the founder to the trade name upon his death. Where is that lifesaver logo used? I've never seen it before. Was it ever imprinted on earlier pens and/or product boxes?

The lifesaver with an N in the middle was the original Namiki pen logo before the name change. Ron has a nice writeup about this on ebay reviews.