Originally a car called the DAT was built in 1914.

The car's name was an acronym of the company's partners' surnames:

* Kenjiro Den
* Rokuro Aoyama
* Meitaro Takeuchi

The firm was renamed in 1925, to the DAT Motorcar Co.

It was in 1931 when DAT came out with a new smaller car, that the first "Datson", meaning "Son of DAT", was finally built. This was the actual beginning on the Datsun brand name.

Later, in 1933 after Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. took control of DAT Motorcar Co., the last syllable of Datson was changed to "sun", because "son" also means "loss" (損) in Japanese, hence the name "Datsun"