…that Google was originally named "Googol"?
Googol was a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. It was a joke about how much information the search-engine would be able to search.
Here are a few more little-known facts about Company Names.
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Apple Computers was named after co-founder, Steve Jobs' favorite fruit. |
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CISCO is short for San Francisco. |
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Compaq is formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object. |
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eBay's founder had an earlier endeavor named Echo Bay Technology Group. "Echo Bay" didn't refer to anything. It just sounded cool. But the name was already registered, so the founder registered what he thought was second best. |
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Hewlett Packard is named after its founders. They tossed a coin to decide whether the company would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett. |
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Intel is an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics. |
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Lotus (Notes) was named after "The Lotus Position" or "Padmasana," taken from the Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. |
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Microsoft was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on. |
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Motorola was named when the company started manufacturing radios for motor vehicles. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola. |
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Nintendo is composed of 3 Japanese Kanji characters, Nin-ten-do the first two of which can be translated to "Heaven blesses hard work"; do is a common ending for any store. |
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Oracle company founders were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was Oracle, which the CIA saw as the system to give answers to all questions or some such. |
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Pepsi derived its name from the treatment of dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment. |
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Qualcom was named for founders who discussed an idea about how to build a "QUALity COMMunications" company. |
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SAP stands for "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing," formerly "SystemAnalyse und Programmentwicklung," which is German for "System analysis and program development." |
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Sony originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster. |
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SUN was founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. |
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Unilever was created in 1930 by the merger of British soapmaker Lever Brothers and Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie. |
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Yahoo! 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 selected the name because they considered themselves to be "yahoos." |
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Crown was originally named Transport Services International, TSI, back in 1965. As the company expanded, Jim Thompson, Company Founder and current Chairman, was determined to come up with a new name that was elegant, classy and easy to remember. The name was changed to Crown Pacific and eventually, The Crown Worldwide Group. Please click here if you would like to read more about Crown's history and the evolution of the Crown name. |
