Etymology of -tan

People still say XP-tan, Me-tan, 95-tan in English because that is how the 2004 wave was subtitled. On the original board, speakers also used -san, -chan, -kun, or dropped the honorific. 98-tan is often Hacchan. 98SE-tan is Secchan. XP-tan is Saseko, from how XP keys sit on a Japanese keyboard. Windows 2000 is 2K or Nisen, not 'Windows 2000-tan' in casual speech.

Moeverse notes that Nijiura sometimes preferred OS Girl / OS娘 to mark internal vs external publication. OSC's introduction says the original creators later leaned away from -tan. Modern Futaba names — Seven-chan, Battenichi-chan, 11-chan — follow that drift.

Corporate names do not use -tan at all. Madobe (窓辺) means 'by the window.' Nanami plays on nana / seven. Tōko plays on tō / ten. Aizawa Inori in Japanese name order is a pun on IE. Those are advertising names, not honorifics.

See also

OS-tanOS-tans are moe personifications of operating systems that started on Futaba Channel in 2003. Fan canon is not the later Microsoft mascot campaigns.GlossaryShort definitions for OS-tan terms: Toshiaki, Saseko, negi, DSP, Navi+, OSC canon, and the rest.CanonOS-tan 'canon' means a design other artists reused, especially the OSC list. It is not a license and not Microsoft.