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* Forwarded by Michael Haritonov (2:5066/70.22)
* Area : XSU.USELESS.FAQ
* From : Alex Nikolaenko Jr, 2:5010/148.24 (02 Sep 04 15:21)
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This is a list of company names with their name origins explained. Some origins
are disputed.


Adobe - came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of
founder John Warnock.

Apache - It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches
to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server --
thus, the name Apache.

Apple - favourite 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 his colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5pm. Apple's
Macintosh is named after a popular variety of apple sold in the US.

Canon - from Kwanon the Buddhist god of mercy. The name was changed to Canon to
avoid offending religious groups.

Casio - from the name of its founder, Kashio Tadao who had set up the company
Kashio Seisakujo as a subcontractor factory.

Cisco - its not an acronymn but its the short for San Francisco.

Compaq - using Comp, for computer, and paq to denote a small integral object.

Corel - from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland
REsearch Laboratory.

Daewoo - the company founder Kim Woo Chong called it Daewoo which means "Great
Universe" in Korean.
Exxon - a name contrived by Esso (Standard Oil of New Jersey) in the early 70s
to create a neutral but distinctive label for the company. Within days of
announcement of the name, Exxon was being called the "double cross
company "
but this eventually subsided.

Fuji -  from the highest Japanese mountain Mount Fuji

Google - the name started as a jokey 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 grad 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 - stands for "sunrise" in Japanese.

Honda - from the name of its founder, Soichiro Honda

Honeywell - from the name of Mark Honeywell founder of Honeywell Heating
Specialty Co. It later merged with Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company and was
finally called Honeywell Inc.in `63.

Hotmail - 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.

Hyundai - means "present time" in Korean.

IBM - started by 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.

LG - combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Lotus - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or
'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique
as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft - coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to
MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed
later on.

Mitsubishi - name coined by founder Yataro Iwasaki in 1870. It means "three
diamonds" in Japanese. The three diamonds also make up the company's logo.

Motorola - Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started
manufacturing radios for carss. Many audio equiptment makers of the era used
the "ola" ending for their products, most famously the
"Victrola" phonograph
made by the Victor Talking Machine Company.

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

Nabisco - Formerly The National Biscuit Company, changed in 1971 to Nabisco.

Nikon - the original name was Nippon Kogaku, meaning "Japanese Optical".

Nintendo - Nintendo is composed of 3 Japanese Kanji characters, Nin-ten-do
which can be translated to "Heaven blesses hard work"

Nissan - the company was earlier known by the name Nichon Sangio which means
"Japanese industry".

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.

Novell - Novell, Inc. was earlier Novell Data Systems co-founded by George
Canova. The name was suggested by George's wife who mistakenly thought that
"Novell" meant "new" in French.

Oracle - Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for
the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called
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 Larry and Bob
decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the
name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the
company.

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.

Sanyo - The Japanese translation is disputed, although the Chinese name is
"??"
(literally, "Three
Oceans")

SAP - "Systems, Applications, Productss in Data Processing",
formed by 4 ex-IBM
employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.

SCO - from Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz,
California. It became the eventually licensor for Unix (via Unix Systems Labs
and then Novell), and eventually went bankrupt. The assets were purchased by
Caldera Inc (itself a spin off of Novell) and Caldera changed its own name back
to SCO. It is this SCO which has sued IBM and others, asserting its ownership
of the copyright to Unix source code.

Siemens - founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens.

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

Subaru - from the Japanese name for the star cluster known to Westerners as
Pleiades or the Seven Sisters. This star cluster features on the company's
logo.

SUN - founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford
University Network.
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".

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 eight Japanese letters, a number that is considered lucky in Japan.

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. However, Yahoo! today claims a sort
of backformed acronym -- Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.

3M - Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the
material corundum used to make sandpaper.

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--- Try "win /t" to run Windows in text mode