Is that were the name comes from?

Actually, as I understand it, "Jinteki" means "Human" in Japanese, but in the sense of being a kind of an adjective. In that regard, it seems appropriate since they're a genetic engineering company and basically make clones.

Noise actually explains it in one of the books (Strange Flesh, maybe?). He remarks that it's odd that it's "Jinteki" and not "Jinteku", which is what it would be if they had just Japanified "gene tech". He suggest that the reason is that the kanji used for "Jinteki" actually have a second meaning (that I sadly forget right now).

Edit: the above poster is also correct that Jinteki is an adjective meaning "human" or "personal". "When you need the human touch", indeed.

I don't think the actual kanji used for Jinteki are ever mentioned. It's probably ??, which means human or human-like, as Oathkeeper said.

I like to think the "teki" is spelled with ? for enemy however, because that would make it that much more interesting.

And yeah, Genetech would be ?????? aka jiintekku.

"Ever wonder why Jinteki isn't called 'Jinteku'? I did."

"Uh. No. Not--"

"Most people think it's just a phonetic Japanese imitation of 'gene tech.' And they do that, of course, but if they'd just adapted the sounds it would have been 'Jinteku.' That's how those adaptations work."

"Oh."

"But if you fudge the first character in the name slightly and give it a Chinese reading, you get 'human,' and then 'teki' basically comes across as 'like.' Human-like."

Tallie blinked slowly. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to be saying.

"But what's entertaining is that if you use different characters for the 'teki' part of the name they mean 'enemy.' Human-like or human-enemy, depending on how you read their name. Amusing, isn't it? I'm surprised Human First hasn't picked up on it."

-- from "Strange Flesh", by Mel Odom

Thanks for posting that! That is exactly the passage I had in mind.

Aside: Oh, Mel Odom wrote at least one of the Android novels? I enjoyed him as a Shadowrun writer. Maybe I'll take a closer look at the Android novels.

I've read all the ones I've seen released so far. I personally thought that "Free Fall" was pretty awful, but I've seen a few people who really liked it. "Strange Flesh" wasn't too bad, but somehow never really grabbed my interest.

Mel Odom's writing/written a trilogy based around Haas-Bioroid. ("Golem" and "Mimic" so far). They're probably the best of the ones I've read. None of it's exactly high literature, but I'll definitely read the final book when it's released.

Oh, and my mistake. "Strange Flesh" is by Matthew Farrer, not Mel Odom.