The Meaning Behind the Name “KCmitF”
In July 2012, I officially registered my business as a sole proprietorship, and now over eight years have passed since I started working independently. I don’t really talk much about the meaning behind the name of my business “KCmitF” (pronounced as Kay-See-Mitt-Eff). However, recently when I have been asked, this is how I answer people.
When my wife was apprenticing in Germany, she introduced my name as “Keisuke” to her colleagues. Most of the Germans tried to pronounce it as something like “Ke-su-ke” or “Kei-shu-ki”, but they couldn’t say it well. In the end, I said, “It’s too much trouble, just call me KC!”. Since then, people naturally started calling me KC.
I enjoyed this experience so much that my wife has continued to refer to me as “KC” ever since she returned to Japan. In a sense, a name is a symbol used in order for people to be recognized by others, so we tend to overthink and entrust it with too much serious meaning. However, this episode gave me the chance to change my perspective and realized that it’s okay to transform a name into its most simple and functional form.
As such, when I was thinking of a trade name for the launch of my business, I adopted “KC” because I wanted to name it symbolically while keeping the semantic connection to my name. According to accepted theory, names should be “easy to remember” or have “a meaning that is immediately conveyed”. But, I faintly recall that I dared to say, “It doesn’t matter if it is hard to remember, I want to work with people who will remember it.”
By the way, the “mitF” part has a more specific meaning. Mit means “with” in German and the “F” refers to the following:
- Family
- Friends
- Fan
- Fellow
- Folk
+
- Football（Just for fun!）
These words represent the people and things that I want to live and work with, which is why it’s part of my business name. Because the name has an actual meaning behind it, I often get advice that I should tell people about it – so I thought I would take the opportunity of launching this website to explain it.
Through these eight years of running my own business, I finally feel that my work has taken on a form that has substance and “flesh and blood”. Even if I don’t talk about it directly, I hope that through the symbol and name “KCmitF”, my actions and accomplishments can remain in the memories of people I work with. This is what I would like to devote myself to everyday.
PS. On a side note, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to work with many foreign colleagues in my job, and they all pronounce “Keisuke” properly. In the end, even if the name sounds difficult to pronounce, I quickly realized that they would remember it correctly depending on the level of the relationship. When we first met, I said – “My name might be difficult to say, so you can just call me KC!” Even so, everyone still calls me “Keisuke” which makes me think I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by good people.
Edwin & Meiling, Tony & Yen, Timo & Melanie, Kuma-san, thank you for everything!