The Strange Tale of the Hotchkiss

Some time ago my attention was drawn to the origins of the word ホチキス (hochikisu) (sometimes ホッチキス) in Japanese.

To a native speaker of English who actually knows the word Hotchkiss, it usually refers to a WWI machine gun and related military impedimenta. To a Japanese ホチキス invariably refers to an office paper stapler, for which it is the generic name just as "hoover" is the term for vacuum cleaner in the UK.

When I first encountered the term in Japanese I assumed it came from the American brand of stapler of that name, which was dominant in the market in the early years of the 20th century. A Japanese participant in the sci.lang.japan usenet group was of the view it derived from the machine gun, so I went digging.

Some Japanese dictionaries attribute the term to the invention of the stapler by one B.B. Hotchkiss. We see, for example:

Daijirin:

ホチキス コの字形の針を紙に打ち込んでとじあわせる道具の商標名。 アメリカ人ホチキス（B. B. Hotchkiss）が発明した。 ステープラー。ホッチキス。

Koujien tells a slightly different story:

ホッチキス【Hotchkiss】 - 機関銃の一種。アメリカ人ホッチキス(Benjamin Berkeley H. 1826-1885)が発明。ガス圧を利用した空冷式のもの。 - 紙綴器の一種。「コ」の字形の綴じ金具を挿入し、把手を押して 紙などを綴り合せる具。綴込器。ホチキス。

A bit further digging turns up the following:

1. the gun, etc. indeed came from Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss who was an American who set up his company in France because the US government wasn't interested in WMDs then. The company diversified into vehicle parts, etc. as well as guns. He died in 1885, as Koujien says. (ref)

2. the stapler appears to have emerged from the Jones Manufacturing Company, which was incorporated in 1895 by a group of people including George Hotchkiss and his son Eli Hubbell Hotchkiss. According to Curtis Scaglione (link below), the Hotchkisses bought a failing business in which the King stapler was considered a company asset. The company became the E. H. Hotchkiss Company in 1897.

   See the entry in the Stapler Database, the Brief History of Staples on a blog site, and the short article in the stapler of the week blog.

Nothing that I could find in WWW documents stated a relationship between the BB Hotchkiss (died 1885) and the Hotchkisses who 10 years later founded an office products company. As they all hailed from Connecticut, they may well have been related. Since I first compiled this page several people have contacted me with further information:

• Curtis Scaglione wrote that according to Eli's great-great-grandson, Eli was related to the inventor of the gun.
• Robert Katz emailed in 2008: "according to a friend of mine who is also a friend of some of the Hotchkiss family in Connecticut, E H Hotchkiss, ... was a nephew of B B Hotchkiss".
• in 2014 I was contacted by George Hotchkiss Rippere, whose paternal grandmother was a niece of Eli Hotchkiss. According to George: "Benjamin & Eli Hotchkiss are not related. Two totally different families." (More information from George is below.)

In 2003 I aired this on the jeKai mailing list. Yuno Hanlon passed on a reference to a site dealing with names and trademarks. The ホチキス section says:

現在は商標公開されている。ホチキスの歴史は こちら。 ホチキスの起源についてはこちらの Webページが詳しい。 これらの ページによると、 よく言われる機関銃とホチキスの関係は 同名の会社や創業者/発明者を 混同したことによる誤解のようである。

So Mr Shigeki Yoshida (吉田茂樹), the author of this site, thinks it is a case of confusion.

Yuno commented: "The entry for ホチキス provides a link to a page in the website of the office supply company マックス, which traces an (inconclusive) search for the origin of ホチキス by NTV. It also says that, according to another TV programme (なるほど・ザ・ワールド), Eli Hotchkiss is Benjamin's younger brother."

This conflation of the manufacturer of the Hotchkiss stapler and the inventor of the Hotchkiss machine gun seems to be a totally Japanese thing. I can't find a source for it outside Japan. Certainly nothing available about the Hotchkiss company in the US ever mentions Benjamin or his machine gun. Did Benjamin actually invent the stapler, but left it to relatives to turn into a product a decade or more after his death? It seems unlikely to me. I suspect a lexicographic slip which has been repeated, and has now become part of the folklore.

Was Eli a much younger brother of Benjamin, or was he a nephew, as Robert Katz reports? George Rippere's information refutes that possibility. In any case the broader Hotchkiss clan must have been quiteinventive.

They were successful but had their share of tragedy like everyone else. Eli and his wife had two daughters die; Esther age 2 May 28 and Leila age 4 June 6-both in 1889. Their third child was born October 31 1890, Gertrude and she lived until 1960. She was a benefactor to a black nursing college back in the 1920's and built a hospital wing in Norwalk, Ct. Eli died 3/1918 aboard his boat when he choked to death on a sandwich. His widow and then daughter Gertrude ran the company. Eli's brother, Frank, died in 11901 age 41 from Rheumatoid arthritis complications. Frank's wife died 3 years after he married and 7 months after giving birth to my grandmother. He remarried in 1892 to Anita Day whose family owned the Waterman Pen Co. George Hotchkiss' wife died 1885 age 49 and his first born child died age 7 months. The only family member I ever met was Esther (Ettie) Susan Hotchkiss. She lived at the Mayflower Hotel in New York for about the last ten years of her life. She died 5/1953.

David also asked me to mention that: "that research into that line is ongoing, and it is still possible that errors may be found."

Jim Breen
February 2004
April 2008
February 2010
September 2014
June 2017
June 2020

(Thanks to Yuno Hanlon for the additional references, and to Curtis Scaglione, Robert Katz and George Rippere for their advice.)