By The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com
Publication Date: 2026-01-17 04:39:00
Larry Ellisonthe Jewish founder of oracle and a major pro-Israel donor, has recently been in the headlines for his media acquisition ventures with his son.
The family’s new investigation has uncovered a decades-old detail about Ellison: that he once renamed a superyacht after realizing the original name had anti-Semitic connotations.
In 1999, Ellison, then No. 23 on the Forbes billionaires list and well on his way to his current No. 4 ranking, bought a boat called Izanami.
The 191-foot superyacht was originally built for a Japanese businessman and named after a Shinto deity. But Ellison soon realized what the name meant backwards: “I am a Nazi.”
“Izanami and Izanagi are the names of the two Shinto deities who gave birth to the Japanese islands, according to legend,” Ellison said in “software“, a 2013 biography. “When the local newspapers pointed out that Izanami was spelled backwards: “I am a Nazi,” I had the choice of explaining Shintoism to reporters…
