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 NCSA’s 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 didn’t get any better name for his new company. So one day he told to the staff: “If I’ll not get better name by 5 o’clock today, our company’s name will be anything he likes…” So at 5 o’clcok 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 BillÂ…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.
