How They Named Companies:

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.

Apple Favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

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.

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola's name is derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' for the name to look better.

Dell Named after its founder, Michael Dell. The company changed its name from Dell Computer in 2003.

Fanta Fanta was originally invented by Max Keith in Germanyin 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 Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production.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.

Google The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a Cheque made out to 'Google

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

Hotmail Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email 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 programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casings.

HSBC The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

Hyundai connotes the sense of 'the present age' or 'modernity' in Korean.

IBM Named by Tom Watson, an ex-employee of National Cash Register. To one-up them in all respects, he called his company International Business Machines.

Intel Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Kawasaki From the name of its founder, Shozo Kawasaki

Kodak Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman . The letter 'K' was a favourite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with 'K'. He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera.

Konica It was earlier known as Konishiroku Kogaku. Konishiroku in turn is the short for Konishiya Rokubeiten which was the first name of the company established by Rokusaburo Sugiura in the 1850s.

McDonald's From the name of the brothers Dick McDonald and Mac McDonald, who founded the first McDonald 's restaurant in 1940.

Mercedes This is the first name of the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who worked for the early Daimler company around 1900.

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.

Mozilla Foundation From the name of the web-browser that preceded Netscape Navigator. When Marc Andreesen , founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) by Jamie Zawinski.

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.

Nortel The Nortel Networks name came from Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Bay Networks. The company was originally spun off from the Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd in 1895 as Northern Electric and Manufacturing, and traded as Northern Electric from 1914 to 1976.

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.

Red Hat Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as 'that guy in the red hat'. He lost the cap and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone.

Reebok Another spelling of rhebok (Pelea capreolus), an African antelope.

Samsung Meaning three stars in Korean.

Sony From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

Suzuki From the name of its founder, Michio Suzuki.

Tesco Founder Jack Cohen, who from 1919 sold groceries in the markets of the London East End, acquired a large shipment of tea from T. E. Stockwell and made new labels by using the first three letters of the supplier's name and the first two letters of his surname forming the word 'TESCO'.

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! The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

Found interesting? Share this to: