A Brand Name Turned Everyday Word

In English, you “staple” papers with a “stapler” — the tool is named after the small metal staples it fires. In Japanese, the same device is called a ホッチキス (hotchikisu) — named after the company that made it. Japan’s word for stapler is an American brand name from 1900.

This pattern exists in English too (think Kleenex, Xerox, Band-Aid), but ホッチキス is an unusual case because the company that spawned the word is largely forgotten back home. Only Japan kept the name alive.

From Connecticut to Every Japanese Desk

The E.H. Hotchkiss Company, founded by Eli Hubbell Hotchkiss in Connecticut in the 1890s, was one of the earliest industrial stapler manufacturers. Their products reached Japan at the turn of the 20th century via Itōya (伊東屋), a prestigious Ginza stationery shop that imported Western office supplies. Itōya listed the tool in its catalog under the brand name, and the name stuck for the entire category.

Itōya is still in business today in Ginza, now a nine-story stationery paradise — a direct link back to how Japan named the stapler.

Not That Hotchkiss

Confusing footnote: there’s also a famous Benjamin Hotchkiss who invented the Hotchkiss machine gun and the Hotchkiss automobile. These Hotchkisses are entirely unrelated to the stapler Hotchkisses. Japan is naming its staplers after a mostly forgotten office-products company, not a weapons inventor.

Fun Fact

In modern Japanese offices, the verb ホッチキスで留める (hotchikisu de tomeru, “to fasten with a Hotchkiss”) is completely standard. Even digital natives who have never heard of the E.H. Hotchkiss Company use the brand name dozens of times a year without realizing it’s foreign origin — the word is now just the Japanese word for stapler.