カムコーダー

Japanese

Etymology

Japanese sources are inconsistent regarding the derivation.

  • Some references record this as a borrowing from English camcorder,[1][2] as a portmanteau of camera + recorder.[2] However, Japanese-language references do not list any first date.
  • The Japanese Patent Office records this as a registered trademark for Sony, first applied for in 1981.[3]

The term seems to appear first in any language in the early 1980s, and references for English camcorder record the first citations from 1981,[4] consistent with the possibility that this was coined by Sony.

Considering the phonetics, this does appear to be a blend of カメラ (kamera) +‎ レコーダー (rekōdā) coined within Japanese as wasei eigo (和製英語; pseudo-anglicism). If this were a borrowing from English, the first mora would likely be キャ (kya) instead, as in other borrowings from English such as キャンデー (kyandē, “candy”), ギャル (gyaru, “gal”), キャスト (kyasuto, “cast”), or キャメル (kyameru, “camel”).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): [ka̠mɯ̟ᵝko̞ːda̠ː]

Noun

カムコーダー • (kamukōdā) 

  1. [from 1981] a camcorder

Descendants
  • → English: camcorder

References
  1. “カムコーダー”, in デジタル大辞泉 [Digital Daijisen]‎ (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Shogakukan, updated roughly every four months
  2. IT用語辞典バイナリ (IT Yōgo Jiten Bainari, “IT Terminology Dictionary Binary”), entry available here via Weblio
  3. Japan Platform for Patent Information, trademark registration number 1689742, filing date August 21, 1981; entry available online here
  4. “camcorder”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
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