Whatz in the name?
Do you know how these companies got their names... I bet you must
have known most of them. Here is a revision for you.
Compaq
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote
a small integral object.
Adobe
This came from the 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 NCSAs httpd daemon. The result was A
PAtCHy server - thus, the name Apache.
Apple Computers
Steve Jobs was three months late in filing a name for the business
because he didnt get any better name for his new company. So one
day he told to the staff: If Ill not get better name by 5 oclock
today, our companys name will be anything he likes
So at 5
oclcok nobody come up with better name, and he was eating Apple
that time
so he keep the name of the company Apple
Computers.
CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San
Francisco.
Corel
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland.
It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.
Google
The name started as a joke boasting 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 their first funding cheque made out to 'Google'. Since
they didn't want to risk going back to the investor to correct the
error, they retained the name 'Google'!!
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 programming language used to
write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with
selective uppercasing.
Hewlett Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the
company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or
Packard-Hewlett, and the winner was NOT Bill
the winner was
Dave.
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.
Lotus (Notes)
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position'
or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental
Meditation of 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.
Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started
manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the
time was called Victrola.
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 thing). The project was
designed to help use the newly written SQL code by 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 decided on 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.
He lost it 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!
SAP
Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing, formed by 4
ex-IBM employees who used to work in the
Systems/Applications/Projects group of IBM.
Sony
It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and
'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright
youngster.
SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for
Sanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a
microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to
manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a
UNIX-based OS for the computer.
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.
and a side dish
Mercedes
This was actually the Diamler/Benz's French financier's daughter's
name.
