Sony's Vaio, "
Video/Audio Integrated Operations" is yet another
kludgey backtronym devised for making Japanese
product names more palatable to the Western consumer.
(See
NTT DoCoMo for an even worse example.) The
real reason -- which also explains why all
*
Vaio computers, including the one I'm typing this on,
are that same lovely shade of
pale purple --
is that the
Japanese katakana version of the
English word "
violet" is
baioretto
(バイオレット).
Since Japanese does not distinguish between "B" and "V", the phonetic Japanese spelling of the first syllable
is
baio, which was re-mutated back into
English as
vaio.
* Or at least almost all. Some of the latest Transmeta-powered Vaios are black & white, which probably has
the original inventors seeing red.