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Pentel Is Changing Its Name After 55 Years — Here's What It Means

On March 17, 2026, Pentel announced that it will change its corporate name to Astrum Corporation, effective April 1. The Pentel brand itself will survive — products will still carry the Pentel name worldwide — but the company behind them will no longer be called Pentel.

For anyone who writes, draws, or has ever clicked a mechanical pencil, this is worth pausing on.

What "Pentel" actually means

The name Pentel was originally a product trademark, born from a combination of "painting" and "pastel" — a nod to the company's earliest work making crayons and pastels after its founding in 1946. Over time, the name took on a second meaning: "pen" and "tell," as in telling a story through writing. In 1971, the company officially adopted Pentel as its corporate name.

That's 55 years of a name that was, in itself, a small piece of design: compact, meaningful, and immediately connected to what the company does.

What "Astrum" means

The new name comes from the Latin word for "celestial body." According to the announcement, the idea draws on the connection between early human intelligence and reading the stars — as seen in the cave paintings at Lascaux. Astrum is meant to serve as a guiding symbol for the stationery brands merging under the Plus Group umbrella.

Whether the name will feel as natural as Pentel did is something only time can answer.

Why this is happening

Pentel has been part of the Plus Corporation group, one of Japan's largest office supply companies. Plus is now pushing toward becoming a global stationery conglomerate by 2028, consolidating its stationery brands — including Pentel, Japan Notebook (Nihon Note), and its own Plus Stationery Company — under one structure. Sailor, the fountain pen maker also under the Plus umbrella, will remain independent as a publicly listed company.

The name change to Astrum is the first visible step in that consolidation. It signals that Pentel's corporate identity is being absorbed into something larger, even as the product brand stays intact.

What doesn't change

Your Pentel EnerGel is still a Pentel EnerGel. The Orenz is still an Orenz. Graphgear, Smash, Sign Pen — all unchanged. The products, the branding, the quality — none of that is affected by this corporate renaming. Pentel's overseas subsidiaries, including Pentel of America, are also not changing their names.

This is a corporate restructuring, not a product discontinuation.

A personal note

I live in Saitama, just outside Tokyo. Until recently, Pentel's Soka factory was about two kilometers from my house. Every time I drove past and saw the Pentel logo, it reminded me of the Sign Pens I'd used for years.

The factory was recently closed and demolished — a supermarket is being built on the site now.

There's something about watching a familiar name disappear from a building, and then from the company itself, that makes you notice things you took for granted. Pentel pens were just always there — in classrooms, in offices, in pen cups on kitchen counters. The name never needed explaining.

Astrum will need some explaining. Maybe it'll grow into itself. But "Pen" and "Tell" was hard to beat.

A brief history worth knowing

Pentel was founded in 1946 as Japan Stationery Co., Ltd. The company invented the fiber-tipped pen — what most people now call a felt-tip pen — and launched the Sign Pen in 1963. That pen was used by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and was adopted as an official writing instrument by NASA, flying on a Gemini mission in 1966. Over two billion Sign Pens have been sold worldwide.

The company also pioneered non-permanent marker technology and has been a leader in mechanical pencils — the Pentel Sharp series is one of the most recognized names in the category.

That history doesn't go away with a name change. But the label on the door matters more than companies tend to think.