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Comment by reducesuffering | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised the article didn't mention one of the most popular names for the "Seven Sisters," Subaru, the Japanese name and vehicle manufacturer whose logo contains six of the stars.

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This has made the brand very popular with lesbians. Subaru has capitalized on it well.

https://medium.com/th-ink/how-subarus-became-the-car-for-les...

That is a decent writeup of how Subaru marketed to lesbians, and covers broadly the same grounds as others I've encountered over the years.

Nowhere, of course, does it reference Subaru meaning the Pleiades being one of those reasons, because it isn't.

It actually is, the Subaru logo is the 7 sisters. It created the affinity for the brand. Market research identified it, and it has of course grown with marketing. It was something I looked into back in the 90’s when I noticed such a high correlation between the two.

I find it very difficult to believe that any car company in the 90’s targeted the market before they realized they were already winning it.

I hope the legend of how the Pleiades sold Subarus to lesbians also endures for 100,000 years.

“The six of the stars” are in fact all the stars. :)

Subaru does not translate to "seven sisters" (or even six sisters) so bringing up Subaru would undermine the claim of the article

Not directly. Translation would be "to govern" or "gather together", but Subaru is one of the constellation's names in Japan, like it would also be called Pleiades in the West, deriving from "plein", meaning "to sail."[0]

[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20100411083646/http://www.subaru...

I think his point is while Subaru does mean Pleiades in Japanese (actually came from Chinese), it (the name) has nothing to do with "seven sisters".

>nothing to do with "seven sisters"

I don’t see anyone claiming that Subaru means seven sisters. It’s just another name for the same constellation.

I don't follow. The logo literally has six stars, which is the subject of what we are discussing here.

They’ve identified the same stars, but do the Han or Korean or Japanese have a story about 7 sisters?

Subaru itself cited[1] Kojiki literature from the 8th century when talking about the origin of its name.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20100411083646/http://www.subaru...

Unfortunately, trying to find anything more online, such as what exactly the Kojiki says about them, doesn't seem to yield much.

Chinese have a story called 天仙配, where a fairy maiden married to a mortal. That girl is called seventh fairy, as she’s the last of 7 sisters.

So it is very similar to the lost Pleiad, but the seventh fairy is taken back by her god father.

Doesn't look like. According to Japanese Wikipedia they used to be also called 六連星 ("group of 6 stars", I think?).

No, but the radicals in 昴 (pleiades) are "sun", repeat, and "at same time".

So even if we're being very literal, "the one with the two stars at the same time" is an accurate description of both the hidden sister story and the cluster.

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