Driving forward with Greek and Latin

Friends visiting for the weekend just pulled out of the driveway, and as we were saying our last farewells, my husband and I noticed the tires on the car. My husband noticed the brand (Hankook), because the brand had been recommended to him, and I noticed the model, VENTUS AS, because ventus is the Latin word for “wind.” Having never heard of Hankook before, I searched the Internet and found their global site, where I learned about the scope of the business and interesting tire names. Probably in the not too distant future Hankook tires will be on your radar if not your vehicle, because Hankook is a Korean company, with plants all over the world, making millions of excellent tires. In addition to the VENTUS model, there are also OPTIMO (from the Latin word optimus meaning “very good, excellent, best,” and other models with names rooted in Greek and Latin, such as the KINERGY (from kin, Greek for “move,” and (en)ergy, Greek for “work”) and the DYNAPRO (from Greek dyn meaning “power” and Latin pro meaning “forward”). The DYNAPRO is an excellent name for a tire designed for the toughest pickup truck! I again maintain that knowledge of Greek and Latin helps us understand the world around us and gives us the power to name our inventions and creations, no matter who is doing the inventing and no matter where the inventions are coming into being.