Adidas:- From the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
Adobe:- Came from name of the river
Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John
Warnock and Chuck Geschke .
AMD:- Advanced Micro Devices.
Apple:- for the favorite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. He was three
months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computer if his colleagues
didn't suggest a better name by 5 p.m. Apple's Macintosh is named after a popular variety of apple sold in the US .
Apple also wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by the other computer
companies at the time had names like IBM, NEC, DEC, ADPAC, Cincom, Dylakor, Input, Integral Systems,SAP,
PSDI, Syncsort and Tesseract. The new company sought to reverse the entrenched view of computers in order to get
people to use them at home. They looked for a name that was unlike the names of traditional computer companies, a name
that also supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different.
Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle's Apple Corps to use the name 'Apple' and paid a one-time royalty
of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name 'Macintosh',
known now as just 'Mac'.
AT&T:- American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation
officially changed its name to AT&T in the 1990s.
BBC:- Stands for British
Broadcasting Corporation.
BenQ:- Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to life
BMW:- Abbreviation of Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Factories)
Canon:- Originally (1933) Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory the new name (1935) derived from the name of the company's
first camera, the Kwannon, in turn named after the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.
Compaq:- from "comp" for computer, and "pack" to denote a small integral object; or: Compatibility And Quality; or: from the
company's first product, the very compact Compaq Portable.
Dell:- Named
after its founder, Michael Dell. The company changed its name from Dell Computer
in 2003.
DHL:- The company was founded by Adrian
Dalsey, Larry Hillblom , and Robert Lynn , whose last initials form the
company's moniker.
Fanta:- Was originally invented by Max Keith in Germany in 1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola syrup to
Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German
word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors thought that imagination was needed to taste
oranges from the strange mix.
Fiat:- Acronym of
Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Factory of Cars of Turin).
Fuji:- From the highest Japanese
mountain Mount Fuji.
Goggle:- The name is an intentional misspelling of the word googol,
reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount
of information available online.
HP:- Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard
or Packard-Hewlett.
Hitachi:- Old place name, literally "sunrise"
Honda:- From the name of its founder, Soichiro Honda
Hotmai:l- Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia
came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail
as it included the letters "HTML" - the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with
selective upper casing. (If you click on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you will
still find "HoTMaiL" in the URL.)
HSBC:- The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Intel:- Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore initially
incorporated their company as N M Electronics. Someone suggested Moore Noyce
Electronics but it sounded too close to "more noise" -- not a good choice for an electronics company! Later, Integrated
Electronics was proposed but it had been taken by somebody else. Then, using initial syllables from INTegrated ELectronics,
Noyce and Moore came up with Intel. To avoid potential conflicts with other companies of similar names, Intel purchased the
name rights for $15,000 from a company called Intelco. (Source: Intel 15 Years Corporate Anniversary Brochure)
LG:- Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar. (In Mexicopublicists explained the name change to the public
as an abbreviation to LÃnea Goldstar Spanish for Goldstar Line)
Mazda Motor:- From the company's first president, Jujiro Matsuda . In Japanese, no syllables are ever stressed and some inner syllables
are virtually skipped. Thus, Matsuda is pronounced "Matsda" To make the name fly better outside of Japan, the spelling was
changed to Mazda.
McDonald's:- from the name of the brothers Dick McDonald and Mac
McDonald, who founded the first McDonald 's restaurant in 1940.
Microsoft:- Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened
Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.
Motorola:- Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company (at the time, Galvin Manufacturing Company) started manufacturing
radios for cars. Many audio equipment makers of the era used the " ola" ending for their products, most famously the "Victrola"
phonograph made by the Victor Talking Machine Company. The name was meant to convey the idea of "sound" and "motion".
The name became so recognized that the company later adopted it as the company name.
MRF:- Madras Rubber Factory, founded by K M Mammen Mappillai in 1946. He started with a toy balloon-manufacturi ng unit at Tiruvottiyur,
Chennai (then called Madras). In 1952, he began manufacturing tread-rubber, and
in 1961, tyres.
Nero:- Nero Burning ROM named after Nero
burning Rome.
Nike:- Named for the Greek goddess of victory.
Nokia:- Started as a wood-pulp mill, the company expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company
later adopted the city's name.
Oracle:- Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).
The code name for the project was Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or some such).
The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL database language from IBM. The project eventually was terminated
but they decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine.
Later they changed the name of the company, Relational Technology Inc, to the
name of the product.
Pepsi:- Pepsi derives its name from
(treatment of) dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment.
Philips:- Royal Philips Electronics was
founded in 1891, by brothers Gerard (the engineer) and Anton (the entrepreneur)
Philips .
Reebok:- Another spelling of rhebok (Pelea
capreolus), an African antelope.
Samsung:- Meaning three stars in Korean.
Sanyo:- The Japanese translation is
disputed, although the Chinese name is "??" (literally, "Three Oceans")
SEGA:- "Service Games of Japan" (SeGa)
Founded by Marty Bromley (an American) to import pinball games to Japanfor use
on American military bases.
Siemens:- Founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske: the company was originally called Telegraphen-
Bau-Anstalt von Siemens & Halske.
Suzuki:- From the name of its founder, Michio Suzuki
Toshiba:- Was founded by the merger of consumer goods company Tokyo Denki (Tokyo Electric Co) and electrical firm Shibaura Seisaku-sho
(Shibaura Engineering Works).
Toyota:- From the founder's name Sakichi Toyoda.
Initially called Toyeda, it was changed after a contest for a better-sounding
name.
The new name was written in katakana with eight strokes, a number that is considered lucky in Japan.
Vodafone:- Is a multinational mobile phone operator with headquarters in the United Kingdom. Its name is made up of VOice, DAta,
TeleFONE. Vodafone made the UK 's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on the 1 January 1985 .
Volvo:- From the Latin word
"volvo", which means "I roll". It was originally a name for a ball bearing being
developed by SKF.
Xerox:- The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his
product trying to say `dry' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the
then prevailing
wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.
Yahoo:- A "backronym" for Yet Another Hierarchical
Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his
book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders David
Filo and Jerry Yang selected the name because they jokingly considered
themselves yahoo.
