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The names of some very familiar companies are also contractions. For example, Toshiba is a contraction of "Tokyo Shibaura", and Nissan is a contraction of "Nippon Sangyo". The contractions may be commonly used, or they may be specific to a particular group of people. For example the "Kokuritsu Kankyo Kenkyujo" (国立環境研究所, National Institute For Environmental Sciences Of Japan , NIES) is known as ''Kanken'' (環研) by its employees, but this terminology is not familiar to most Japanese. PATTERNS OF CONTRACTION In contracted kanji words, the most common pattern of contraction is to take the first kanji of each word and put them together. In loanwords and names, the most common pattern is to take the first two Mora s of two word, in other words the first two Kana , and form a new word from the four moras put together. For example "family restaurant", ''famirī resutoran'', becomes ''famiresu''. Yōon sounds, sounds represented using a kana ending in ''i'' and a small ''ya'', ''yu'' or ''yo'' kana, such as ''kyo'' count as one mora. Japanese Long Vowel s and Sokuon (small tsu) count as two moras, and may disappear; Harry Potter, originally ''Harī Pottā'', is contracted to ''Haripota'', or otherwise be altered; actress Kyoko Fukada, ''Fukada Kyōko'', becomes ''Fukakyon''. These abbreviated names are so common in Japan that many companies initiate abbreviations of the names of their own products. For example, the animated series Pretty Cure marketed itself under the four-character abbreviated name ''purikyua''. The English equivalent of the contraction words is the Acronym And Initialism , such as the TLA . LONG KANJI NAMES LOANWORDS Three and four character loanwords Abbreviations CREATED WORDS Many abbreviations, especially four-character words, have been created for particular products or TV shows. CONTRACTIONS OF NAMES HIGHWAYS AND RAILWAY LINES Many highways and railway lines have names that are contractions of the names of their endpoints. For example, 東名高速道路 ( Tomei Expressway ) takes one kanji 東 (tō) from 東京 ( Tokyo ) and the other 名 (mei) from 名古屋 ( Nagoya ; its pronunciation changes from the Kun'yomi ''na'' to the On'yomi ''mei''). 東急東横線 ( Tokyu Toyoko Line ) links Tokyo and 横浜 Yokohama ), taking part of its name from each city. The railway tunnel linking Aomori and Hakodate is called the , using the first kanji from 青森 (Aomori), and 函館 (Hakodate). SINGLE LETTERS AS ABBREVIATIONS Many single letters of the Latin Alphabet have names that resemble the pronunciations of Japanese words or characters. Japanese people use them in contexts such as advertising to catch the reader's attention. Other uses of letters include abbreviations of spellings of words. Here are some examples:
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