I found this online;

The company name Sony was created by combining two words. One is sonus in Latin, which is the root of such words as sound and sonic. The other is sonny meaning little son. The words were used to show that Sony is a very small group of young people who have the energy and passion toward unlimited creation.

Sony is Japanese, not Latin

entire story


wikipedia link

The name SONY is latin and american.

CIT:One was the Latin word sonus which is the root of "sonic" and "sound" and the other was "sonny", a familiar term used in 1950s America to call a boy.

SONY is a Japanese company.

Yes, yes Walkgirl...we all know that Sony is a Japanese company. However, as supported by TPR, the origin of the name is Latin and English.

They needed a new company name that was easy to say.
There original company name was long and sounded 'industrial'.
Sony might be a division of this company.
(saw a interview of CEO of Sony)

There are some errors in the full story page.
-Not the first transistor radio.
But maybe the first in Japan.
-Trinitron was invented by RCA in USA and
rights sold to Sony. RCA figured it was too
expensive to produce.

Hi,
I read the complete Sony history about a month ago.
Quite an interesting read.

The name did supposedly come from sonus + sonny

According to Sony:
1. The company was first (est. 1946) called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Totsuko for short). They first used the name Sony in 1955 and changed company name to Sony in 1958.
2. The first ever transistor radio was Regency TR1 in 1955, but it used transistors made by TI. Sony claims to be the first company to make a transistor radio with transistors developed & manufactured in house.
3. Sony bought the Cromatron license from RCA. This was a technology far superior (with brighter image & colors, but very expensive) to shadow mask, used in most color TVs of the era. It was used for displays (radar?) in WW2. Sony tried to develop it & make it cheaper. They managed to produce commercial TV sets, but they were a failure (a layer inside CRT was prone to peeling off & shorting the entire CRT).
They developed Trinitron in house instead; first Trinitron was sold in 1968.

I was able to find a page with pictures of Sony transistors from 1950's - they were packaged in boxes like valves (very expensive devices back then...).