Did You Know - Mazda Miata Edition

So The Word 'Miata' Actually Means Something

Leave it to MotorWeek host and OG American video-car-reviewer John Davis to set me straight: “...the name Miata means reward,” he says in the opening standup of the shakedown video that’s now about 27 years old.

Well, OK, this is John Davis we’re talking about, so he said it more like “Mi-hata.”

Pronunciation aside, every forum and other site I’ve looked at concurs with his definition and Miata.net seems to offer the most complete backstory:

Rod Bymaster, Mazda’s head of product planning and marketing for the Miata project back in the early days, claims his “biggest contribution to the project was to have found the word Miata in Webster’s Dictionary, which is defined as “reward in Old High German.”

I did drop Mazda a line to confirm it, and even though it’s Friday afternoon and the company’s communications staff is probably all out Miataing themselves by now, spokesman Jacob Brown hit me back and said “yup,” indeed, this is legit.
(Jalopnik.com)