before the internet, and bogus stories of this nature were therefore not prevalent

But by no means non-existent. Way I heard it enko meant broken car in Japanese. Never heard any confirmation from anybody actually knew Japanese.

The Nova story is also pre-internet and has been fairly well demolished. See:
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.htm

As a sidelight on the Esso story, there was a pre-internet legend that Exxon was made up from a combination of Esso and Nixon.