Orix Bluewaves the Name

As far as I know Orix is the name of an insurance company in Japan. I'm not sure what it means or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's not a Japanese name. As for Blue Wave, well just guess. I know the Japanese company ASICS is an acronym for some latin words, so maybe Orix is some kind of acronym also.

Anyone feel free to correct me, but I know that ORIX is a financial services company in Japan (they bought the Hankyu Braves and changed the name to ORIX Blue Wave), and I assume Blue Waves refers to Kobe being a "port city". Just a guess though.

hillsy

The two previous posters are both right about what Orix, the company, does. They're into insurance, fincance, car/truck rental, office equiptment rental, and probably many more things that don't come to mind right now.

I'm not exactly sure why or how they came up with the name BlueWave, but it's probably to give them their own identity that goes along with their other businesses. As you can see from their company home page (warning: flash application), blue is one of their corporate main colors. The explaination of "wave" being for the port city of Kobe works for me.

Why did they change their name in 1991? That would have been to give them their own identity, breaking away from that of the long time Hankyu Braves. (They were the Orix Braves from 1981 to 1990.)

Other teams that were bought out and changed their mascot names were:

1954 Toei Fliers ==> 1973 Nittaku Home Fliers ==> 1974 Nippon Ham Fighters

Yakult actually went full circle with their mascot name:

1950 Kokutetsu Swallows ==> 1965 Sankei Swallows ==> 1966 Sankei Atoms ==> 1969 Atoms ==> 1970 Yakult Atoms ==> 1974 Yakult Swallows.

Lotte changed their name when the moved from Kawasaki to Chiba. And Yokohama (Taiyo) Whales changed their name to change their image away from a corporate extention to a more professional, local team.

A little more than you asked?

The word ORIX would appear to be something of an abbreviation of Orient Leasing Co.

The transition from "Braves" to "Blue Waves" was not much of a departure in that they sound almost the same phoenetically when a Japanese person says either: Burabusu (Braves) - Buru uebusu (Blue Waves).

Some Hankyu Braves fans claim that Orix changed the nickname from Braves to Blue Wave, because they did not want to have much to do with the old Hankyu Braves. I suppose that the Orix ball club wanted to chage their image. This is why Orix changed the name to Blue Wave.

Well, one thing you can say about Orix: no bicycle racing while the team is away at Green Stadium like in old Nishinomiya Stadium with Hankyu. By the wat, has Nishinomiya been torn down yet or is that still to be scheduled?