Shinotoshi Nakamura

Shinotoshi Nakamura is an English-language educator and etymologist whose path to the classroom ran through two other careers first. He began as a software engineer, then spent several years in management consulting with one of the Big Four professional-services firms, advising multinational clients on mission-critical core-system implementations.

A long-standing fascination with how language carries meaning eventually pulled him away from consulting and into the formal study of linguistics. He has since worked independently, travelling widely and — over the past twenty years — teaching English to executives and teams at blue-chip corporations across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

His particular interest is the history hidden inside ordinary words: the myths, migrations, and misunderstandings that explain why English means what it means. At English Reference he writes the original etymologies — the longer, narrative word-origin pieces that go beyond the dictionary's standard reference data.