Miraitowa – Favorite word, September 2020

“Miraitowa”. Miraitowa is the combination of the Japanese words for “future” (未来, mirai) and “eternity” (永久, towa) and is the name of a mascot of the Olympics as described here:

Definition of  Miraitowa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraitowa_and_Someity

Miraitowa (Japanese: ミライトワ; pronounced [miɾaitoɰa]^[1]) is the official mascot of the 2020 Summer Olympics, now scheduled to be held in Tokyo, Japan, in 2021.^[a] and Someity (Japanese: ソメイティ; pronounced [someiti]^[2]) is the official mascot of the 2020 Summer Paralympics.

The checkered design on both mascots was inspired by the Tokyo 2020 official logo, Created by Japanese artist Ryo Taniguchi, the mascots was selected from a competition process which took place in late 2017 and early 2018. A total of 2,042 candidate designs were submitted to the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee, which then selected three pairs of unnamed mascot designs from the batch to present to Japanese elementary school students for the final decision. The results of the selection were announced on 28 February 2018, and the mascots were named on 22 July 2018. Miraitowa is named after the Japanese words for “future” (未来, mirai) and “eternity” (永久, towa), and Someity is named after someiyoshino, a type of cherry blossom. Someity’s name also echoes the English phrase “so mighty”.