ACRONYMS & COMPANY ORIGINS

ACRONYMS

 

3Com – computer, communication, and compatibility
3M –Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company

A
ABN AMRO – Algemene Bank Nederland, Amsterdamsche Bank and the Rotterdamsche 

Bank
Alcoa – Aluminum Company of America
AMC Theatres – American Multi-Cinemas
AMD – Advanced Micro Devices
AMKOR – AMericanKORea
Amoco – AMerican Oil Company
AOL – America Online
AT&T – American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation

B
BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation
BEML – Bharat Earth Movers Limited
BenQ – Bringing Enjoyment and Quality
BMW – Bavarian Motor Works
BSNL – Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
BP – British Petroleum
BSA – Birmingham Small Arms Company
BHEL – Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited

C
CA – Computer Associates
CBS – Columbia Broadcasting System
CDAC – Centre for Development of Advanced Computing

D
DKNY – Donna Karan New York

E
EA Games – Electronic Arts
eBay – Echo Bay
ESPN – Entertainment and Sports Programming Network

F
FedEx – Federal Express Corporation
Fiat – Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino

G
GEICO – Government Employees Insurance Company

H
HCL – Hindustan Computers Ltd
HP –Hewlett-Packard
HMV – His Master's Voice
HSBC – Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
HTC Corporation – High Tech Computer Corporation

I
IBM –International Business Machines
ICICI– Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India
IDBI– Industrial Development Bank of India
Infosys – Information Systems
Intel – INTegrated ELectronics

J
JBL – James B Lansing
JVC – Japan Victor Company

K
KFC – short for Kentucky Fried Chicken

L
L&T- Larsen & Toubro
LG –Lucky and Goldstar

M
MGM- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
MITIE –Management Incentive Through Investment Equity
MRF – Madras Rubber Factory
 

N
NCR Corporation – National Cash Register
NEC – Nippon Electric Company

Q
Q8 –Kuwait Petroleum International Limited
Qantas – Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services
Qualcomm – Quality Communication
QVC – Quality, Value and Convenience

R
RAND – Research ANd Development
RCA – Radio Corporation of America
RIM- Research In Motion

S
Sabre – Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment
SAP –Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing
SAS – Scandinavian Airlines System
SAS Institute – Statistical Analysis System
SCB – Standard Chartered Bank
Sega – Service Games
SGI – Silicon Graphics Inc
Sprint – Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal Communications
SRI International – Stanford Research Institute
Sun Microsystems – Stanford University Network

T
TCL – Today China Lion
TCS – Tata Consultancy Services
TEPCO – Tokyo Electric Power Company
Tucows – The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software
TWA – Trans World Airlines

U
Unisys – United Information Systems
Unocal Corporation – Union Oil Company of California
UPS – United Parcel Service of America, Inc
UUNET – UNIX-to-UNIX Network

V
Vodafone –  Voice, Data, Telefone

W
Wipro – Western India Palm Refined Oil Ltd

Y
Yahoo! –Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle

COMPANY ORIGINS

3com – network technology producer; the three coms are computer, communication, and compatibility.

3m – from the company's original name, minnesota mining and manufacturing company.

7-eleven – convenience stores; renamed from "u-tote'm" in 1946 to reflect their newly extended hours, 7:00 am until 11:00 pm

A

Abn amro – in the 1960s, the nederlandsche handel-maatschappij (dutch trading society; 1824) and de twentsche bank merged to form the algemene bank nederland (abn; general bank of the netherlands); in 1966, the amsterdamsche bank and the

rotterdamsche bank merged to form the amro bank; in 1991, abn and amro bank merged to form abn amro.

Accenture – from "accent on the future". The name accenture was proposed by a company employee in norway as part of an internal name finding process (brandstorming). Before 1 january 2001, the company was called andersen consulting.

Acer – born as multitech international in 1976, the company changed its name to acer in 1987. The latin word for “sharp, acute, able and facile”

Adecco – named from the merger of swiss staffing company adia with french staffing company ecco. 

Adidas – from the name of the founder adolf (adi) dassler. 

Adobe systems – from the adobe creek that ran behind the house of co-founder john warnock.

Akai – named for its founder, masukichi akai. 

Alcatel-lucent – alcatel was named from société alsacienne de constructions atomiques, de télécomunications et d'electronique. It took over lucent technologies in 2006.

Altavista – spanish for "high view".

Amazon.com – founder jeff bezos renamed the company amazon (from the earlier name of cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks

and mortar) bookstore. (alternative: amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.)

Amoco – american oil company – now part of bp

Aol – from america online. The company was founded in 1983 as quantum computer services.

Apache – according to the project's 1997 faq: "the apache group was formed around a number of people who provided patch files that had been written for ncsa httpd 1.3. The result after combining them was a patchy server." 

Arcelor – created in 2001 by a merger of arbed (luxembourg), aceralia (spain) and usinor (france) with the ambition of becoming a major player in the steel industry.

Ask.com – search engine formerly named after jeeves, the gentleman's gentleman (valet, not butler) in p. G. Wodehouse's series of books. Ask jeeves was shortened to ask in 2006.

Aston martin – from the "aston hill" races (near aston clinton) where the company was founded, and the surname of lionel martin, the company's founder.

At&t – the american telephone and telegraph corporation officially changed its name to at&t in the 1990s.

Audi – latin translation of the german name "horch". The founder august horch left the company after five years, but still wanted to manufacture cars. Since the original "horch" company was still there, he called his new company audi,

the latin form of his last name. In english it is "hark".

B

Bbc – british broadcasting corporation, originally british broadcasting company.

Beml – bharat earth movers limited, a government of india company.

Ben & jerry's – named after ben cohen and jerry greenfield, who founded an ice cream parlor in 1978 after completing a correspondence course on ice cream making from pennsylvania state university. The company, ben & jerry's homemade 

holdings, inc. Was later taken over by unilever.

Benq – bringing enjoyment and quality to life

Blaupunkt – blaupunkt ("blue dot") was founded in 1923 under the name "ideal". Its core business was the manufacturing of headphones. If the headphones came through quality tests, the company would give the headphones a blue dot. The

headphones quickly became known as the blue dots or blaue punkte. The quality symbol would become a trademark and the trademark would become the company name in 1938.

Bmw – bayerische motoren werke (bavarian motor works).

Boeing – named after founder william e. Boeing. It was originally called pacific aero products co.

Bosch – named after founder robert bosch. Robert bosch gmbh (full company name) is a german diversified technology-based corporation.

Bose corporation – named after founder amar bose.

Bsnl – from bharat sanchar nigam limited (india communications corporation limited).

Bp – formerly british petroleum, now bp. (the slogan "beyond petroleum" has incorrectly been taken to refer to the company's new name following its rebranding effort in 2000.)

Bridgestone – named after founder shojiro ishibashi. The surname ishibashi (石橋) means "stone bridge", or "bridge of stone".

Bsa – birmingham small arms company.

Bhel – bharat heavy electricals limited, a government of india company.

C

Ca – computer associates was founded in 1976 as computer associates international, inc. By charles wang

Cadillac – named after the 18th century french explorer antoine laumet de la mothe, sieur de cadillac, founder of detroit, michigan. Cadillac is a small town in the south of france. The company, founded in 1902, was purchased by general

motors in 1909 and survives to this day as a gm brand.

Canon – originally (1933) precision optical instruments laboratory the new name (1935) derived from the name of the company's first camera, the kwanon, in turn named after the japanese name of the buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.

Carrefour – chain of supermarkets and hypermarkets which started with a store near a crossroads (carrefour in french) in annecy. Cathay pacific airways limited – the airline was founded on 24 september 1946 by american roy c. Farrell and australian sydney h. De kantzow, with each man putting up hk$1 to register the airline. They named it cathay pacific because

cathay was the ancient name given to china; and pacific because farrell speculated that they would one day fly across the pacific.

Casio – from the name of its founder, kashio tadao, who had set up the company kashio seisakujo as a subcontractor factory.

Cbs – columbia broadcasting system

Cdac – centre for development of advanced computing, a government of india company.

Chevrolet – named after company co-founder louis chevrolet, a swiss-born auto racer. The company was merged into general motors in 1917 and survives only as a brand name.

Chrysler – named after the company founder, walter p. Chrysler.

Cisco – short for san francisco.

Coca-cola – derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-cola creator john s. Pemberton changed the 'k' of kola to 'c' to make the name look better.

Colgate-palmolive – formed from a merger of soap manufacturers colgate & company and palmolive-peet. Peet was dropped in 1953. Colgate was named after william colgate, an english immigrant, who set up a starch, soap and candle business

in new york city in 1806. Palmolive was named for the two oils (palm and olive) used in its manufacture.

Compaq – from computer and "pack" to denote a small integral object; or: compatibility and quality; or: from the company's first product, the very compact compaq portable.

D

Daewoo – company founder kim woo chong called it daewoo which means "great house" or "great universe" in korean.

Dell – named after its founder, michael dell. The company changed its name from dell computer in 2003.

Dhl – named after its founders, adrian dalsey, larry hillblom, and robert lynn.

The walt disney company, named for its co-founder walt disney.

Dkny – donna karan new york.

Dow – named after its founder, herbert henry dow.

E

Ea games – ea is from electronic arts. The company was founded in may 1982 as amazin' software and changed its name to electronic arts in october the same year.

Ebay – pierre omidyar, who had created the auction web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called echo bay technology group. "echo bay" did not refer to the town in nevada, "it just sounded cool", omidyar reportedly

said. Echo bay mines limited, a gold mining company, had already taken echobay.com, so omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: ebay.com.

Ernst & young – named for the company's founders, a.c. Ernst and arthur young.

Ericsson – telefonaktiebolaget lm ericsson is named after its founder lars magnus ericsson, who opened a telegraph equipment repair shop in stockholm, sweden, in 1876. 

Epson – epson seiko corporation, the japanese printer and peripheral manufacturer, was named from "son of electronic printer" after a highly successful model, the ep-101

Exxon – a name contrived by esso (standard oil of new jersey) in the early 1970s to create a neutral but distinctive label for the company. Within days, exxon was being called the "double cross company" but this eventually subsided.

(esso is a trademark of exxonmobil.) Esso had to change its name in the u.s. Because of restrictions dating to the 1911 standard oil antitrust decision.

F

Facebook – name stems from the colloquial name of books given to newly enrolled students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the us with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better.

Fedex – abbreviation of federal express corporation, the company's original name. 

Ferrari – from the name of its founder, enzo ferrari.

Fiat – acronym of fabbrica italiana automobili torino (italian automobile factory of turin)

Finnair – from "finland" and "air". Originally called "aero osakeyhtiö", which led to its international flight code, "ay".

Ford motor company – named after its founder, henry ford, who introduced automobile mass production in 1914.

Fuji – named after mount fuji, the highest mountain in japan.

G

Glaxo – a dried-milk company set up in bunnythorpe, new zealand, by joseph edward nathan. The company wanted to use the name "lacto" but it was similar to some already in use. Glaxo evolved and was registered on 27 october 1906. 

Glaxosmithkline was a 2000 merger of glaxo wellcome and smithkline beecham.

Goodyear – named after the founder of vulcanization, charles goodyear, the goodyear tire and rubber company was founded by frank seiberling in 1898.

Google – an originally accidental misspelling of the word googol and settled upon because 
google.com was unregistered. Googol was proposed to reflect the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.

H            

Haier – chinese 海 "sea" and 尔 (a transliteration character; also means "you" in literary chinese). Portion of transliteration of german liebherr 

Harpo productions – production company founded by oprah winfrey. Harpo is oprah backwards.

Hcl – hindustan computers ltd, indian software company founded by shiv nadar.

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"

Hmv – from "his master's voice", which appeared in 1899 as the title of a painting of nipper, a jack russell terrier, listening to a gramophone.

Honda – from the name of its founder, soichiro honda.

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. (at one time, if you clicked on hotmail's 'mail' tab, you

would have seen "hotmail" in the url, but since hotmail is now windows live mail, it is no longer there.)

Hyundai – connotes the sense of "the present age" or "modernity" in korean.

I

Ibm – named by tom (thomas john) watson sr, an ex-employee of national cash register (ncr corporation). To one-up them in all respects, he called his company international business machines.

Ikea – a composite of the first letters in the swedish founder ingvar kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the property and the village in which he grew up: ingvar kamprad elmtaryd agunnaryd.

Imi – imperial metal industries. Split off from imperial chemical industries.

Infosys – an indian software major. "information systems"

Intel – robert noyce and gordon moore initially incorporated their company as n m electronics. Someone suggested moore noyce electronics but it sounded too close to "more noise". Later, integrated electronics was proposed but it had

already been taken, so they used the initial syllables (integrated electronics). To avoid potential conflicts with other companies with similar names, intel purchased the name rights for $15,000 from a company called intelco. (source:

intel 15 years corporate anniversary brochure)

J

Jawa motors – from janeček (the owner) and wanderer (the motorcycle product).

Jbl – from james b lansing, an electronics designer

Johnson & johnson – originally a partnership between brothers james wood johnson and edward mead johnson in 1885, the addition of brother robert wood johnson i led to formal incorporation as johnson & johnson in 1887.

Jvc – japan victor company (victor company of japan, ltd) was founded in 1927 as a us subsidiary, the victor talking machine company of japan, limited. Jvc developed the vhs video cassette format.

K

Kawasaki – from the name of its founder, shozo kawasaki

Kfc – short for kentucky fried chicken.

Kenwood electronics - bill kasuga was a partner in a firm that imported japanese-made audio products from trio corporation to the united states. Kasuga wanted to create a trustworthy and western-sounding name for products sold by his

importing company as he was confident of the quality of trio's products in a period when japanese-made goods were considered subpar. He came up with the kenwood name inspired by the term "ken," which had meaning in japanese and english,

also echoing the consumer resonance of kenmore appliances and "wood", a reference to the durable substance as well as hollywood, suggesting entertainment and durability. Trio corporation would rename itself kenwood in 1986.

Kia motors – the name "kia" (起亞) roughly translates as "rising from asia" in hanja.

Kmart – named for sebastian s. Kresge, who opened the first kmart in 1962 as a division of his s. S. Kresge company. The company became kmart corporation in 1977. After purchasing sears, roebuck & company in 2005, the merged company

became sears holdings corporation, with kmart continuing as a discount store chain within the new structure.

Kodak – both the kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder george eastman. The letter "k" was a favorite 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.

Komatsu – japanese construction vehicle manufacturer named from the city of komatsu, ishikawa, where it was founded in 1917.

L

L&t- the company was founded in mumbai, india in 1938 by two danish engineers, henning holck-larsen & søren kristian toubro.

Lenovo group – a portmanteau of "le-" (from former name legend) and "novo", pseudo-latin for "new". This chinese company took over ibm's pc division.

Lg – from the combination of two popular korean brands, lucky and goldstar. 

L'oréal – in 1907, eugène schueller, a young french chemist, developed an innovative hair-color formula. He called his improved hair dye auréole.

M           

Maggi – food company named after its founder, julius maggi. It was taken over by nestlé in 1947 and survives as a brand name.

Mars – named after frank c. Mars and his wife, ethel, who started making candy in 1911. Their son, forrest e. Mars, joined with bruce murrie, the son of a hershey executive, to form m&m ltd (from mars & murrie). Forrest took over the

family business after his father's death and merged the two companies in 1964. After retiring from mars, inc. In 1993, forrest founded ethel m. Chocolates, named after his mother.

Mattel – a portmanteau of the founders names harold "matt" matson and elliot handler.

Maybach-motorenbau gmbh – it was founded in 1909 by wilhelm maybach with his son karl maybach.

Mazda motor corporation – the company was founded as toyo kogyo, started manufacturing mazda brand cars in 1931, and changed its name to mazda in 1984. The cars were supposedly named after ahura mazda, the chief deity of the

zoroastrians, though many think this explanation was created after the fact, to cover up what is simply a poor anglicized version of the founders name, jujiro matsuda.

Mcdonald's – from the name of the brothers dick mcdonald and mac mcdonald, who founded the first mcdonald's restaurant in 1940.

Mercedes – from the first name of the daughter of emil jellinek, who distributed cars of the early daimler company around 1900.

Metro-goldwyn-mayer (mgm) – film studio formed from the merger of three other companies: metro picture corporation, goldwyn pictures corporation, and louis b. Mayer pictures. Goldwyn picture corporation in turn was named after the last

names of samuel goldfish, and edgar and archibald selwyn.

Microsoft – coined by bill gates to represent the company that was devoted to microcomputer software. Originally christened micro-soft, the '-' disappeared on 3/2/1987 with the introduction of a new corporate identity and logo. The

"slash between the 'o' and 's' [in the microsoft logo] emphasizes the "soft" part of the name and conveys motion and speed."

Mitsubishi – the name mitsubishi (三菱) has two parts: mitsu means three and hishi (changing to bishi in the middle of the word) means diamond (the shape). Hence, the three diamond logo. (note that "diamond" in this context refers only to

the rhombus shape, not to the precious gem.)

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". It became so widely 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, co-founder of netscape, created a browser to replace the mosaic browser, it was internally named mozilla (mosaic-killer,

godzilla) by jamie zawinski. 

Mrf – from madras rubber factory, founded by k m mammen mappillai in 1946. He started with a toy-balloon manufacturing unit at tiruvottiyur, chennai (then called madras). In 1952 he began manufacturing tread-rubber and, in 1961, tyres.

N

Napster – the original music-sharing service was named after co-founder shawn fanning's hairstyle-based nickname.

Nero – nero burning rom named after nero burning rome ("rom" is the german spelling of "rome").

Nestlé – named after its founder, henri nestlé, who was born in germany under the name "nestle", which is german (actually, swabian diminutive) for "bird's nest". The company logo is a bird's nest with a mother bird and two chicks.

Netscape – originally the product name of the company's web browser ("mosaic communications netscape web navigator"). The company adopted the product name after the 

Nike – named for the greek goddess of victory.

Nikon – the original name was nippon kogaku, meaning "japanese optical".

Nintendo – nintendo is the transliteration of the company's japanese name, nintendou. The first (nin) can be translated as to "entrusted"; ten-dou means "heaven".

Nissan – the company was earlier known by the name nippon sangyo which means "japan industries".

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.

Novartis – after the latin expression "novae artes" which means something like "new skills".

O

Onkyo – translates as "sound harmony". The japanese audio company was founded as osaka denki onkyo k.k in 1946.

Ooyala – the word ooyala (ఉయ్యల) means 'cradle' in telugu, as in a "cradle of innovation".

Oracle – larry ellison, ed oates and bob miner were working on a consulting project for the cia. The code name for the project was oracle. The project was designed to use the newly written sql database language from ibm. The project was eventually terminated but they decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. Later they changed the name of the company, relational software inc., to the name of the product.

P

Pepsi – named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.

Peugeot - named after emile peugeot.

Philips – royal philips electronics was founded in 1891 by brothers gerard (the engineer) and anton (the entrepreneur) philips.

Piaggio – the italian company that produced the vespa range of scooters and cars was named after its founder, rinaldo piaggio.

Pioneer corporation - in 1938, nozomu matsumoto, the son of a christian missionary, founded fukuin shokai denki seisakusho ("gospel electric works") to manufacture the a-8 loudspeaker, which he called "pioneer". The company name was

changed to the religiously neutral pioneer electronic corporation in 1961, when it went public. In 1999, the company simplified its name by removing "electronic".

Pixar – from pixel and the co-founder's name, alvy ray smith. According to the biography "the second coming of steve jobs" by alan deutschman, the 'el' in pixel was changed to 'ar' because 'ar' is frequently used in spanish verbs, implying the name means "to pix".

Porsche – car company named after founder ferdinand porsche, an austrian automotive engineer. The family name may have originated in the czech name "boreš" (boresh).

Prada – an italian high fashion house named after the founder mario prada, who founded prada in milan 1914.

Pricewaterhousecoopers – global professional services firm named as a result of the merger of price waterhouse and coopers & lybrand in 1998. It now trades as pwc, although its legal name remains the fully expanded form.

Procter & gamble – named after the founders, william procter, a candlemaker, and james gamble, a soapmaker, who pooled their resources after marrying two sisters. The company was founded in cincinnati in 1837. 

Proton – the malaysian car manufacturer's name is derived from perusahaan otomobil nasional, which means national automobile enterprise in the malay language.

Q

Q8 – the acronym for these gas stations sounds like kuwait, that is, the letter q followed by the number 8. It is the abbreviation for kuwait petroleum international limited.

R

Red hat – while at college, company founder marc ewing was given the cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems and he was referred to as that guy in the red hat. By the time he wrote the manual of the beta version of red hat linux he had lost the cap, so the manual included an appeal to readers to return his red hat if found.

Renault – french car manufacturer founded in 1899 as société renault frères (french for renault brothers) by louis renault and his brothers marcel and fernand.

Research in motion – from the phrase "poetry in motion", which company founder mike lazaridis had seen used to describe a football player.

Rolls-royce – name used by rolls-royce plc and rolls-royce motor cars, among others. In 1884 frederick henry royce started an electrical and mechanical business, making his first car, a royce, in 1904. He was introduced to charles stewart rolls on 4 may that year. The pair entered into a partnership in which royce would manufacture cars to be sold exclusively by rolls, and the cars would be called rolls-royce.

S

Samsonite – named from the biblical character samson, renowned for his strength.

Samsung – meaning three stars in korean. 

Sanyo – meaning three oceans in japanese.

Sap – systemanalyse und programmentwicklung (german for "system analysis and program development"), a company formed by five ex-ibm employees who used to work in the 'systems/applications/projects' group of ibm. Later, sap was redefined

to stand for systeme, anwendungen und produkte in der datenverarbeitung (systems, applications and products in data processing).

Sas – scandinavian airlines system, the flag airline carrier of sweden, norway and denmark.

Sas institute – originally an abbreviation for statistical analysis system.

Scb – from standard chartered bank. The name standard chartered comes from the two original banks from which it was founded – the chartered bank of india, australia and china, and the standard bank of british south africa.

Sealed air – from the "sealed air" found in its most notable product, bubble wrap.

Sega – service games of japan was founded by marty bromley (an american) to import pinball games to japan for use on american military bases.

Sennheiser – named after one of its founders, fritz sennheiser.

Sharp – japanese consumer electronics company named from its first product, an ever-sharp pencil.

Shell – royal dutch/shell was established in 1907, when the royal dutch petrol society plc. And the shell transport and trading company ltd. Merged their operations. The shell transport and trading company ltd had been established at the end of the 19th century by commercial firm samuel & co (founded in 1830). Samuel & co was already importing japanese shells when it set up an oil company, so the oil company was named after the shells.

Siemens – founded in 1847 by werner von siemens and johann georg halske. The company was originally called telegraphen-bau-anstalt von siemens & halske.

 Skoda auto – the car company was founded in 1895 and originally named laurin & klement after its founders, vaclav laurin and vaclav klement. It was taken over by škoda works, an industrial conglomerate, in 1924, and adopted the škoda

name from emil škoda. Škoda auto was split off after world war ii and is now part of volkswagen.

Skype – the original concept for the name was sky-peer-to-peer, which morphed into skyper, then skype.

Smart – swatch + mercedes + art

Sony – from the latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang word used by americans to refer to a bright youngster, "since we were sonny boys working in sound and vision", said akio morita. The company was founded as tokyo tsoshiu kogyo kk (tokyo telecommunications engineering corporation) in 1946, and changed its name to sony in 1958. Sony was chosen as it could be pronounced easily in many languages.

Spar – originally de spar, from door eendrachtig samenwerken profiteren allen regelmatig (dutch, meaning "all will benefit from united co-operation"). "de spar" in dutch translates as "the fir tree", hence the fir tree logo. As the

company expanded across europe, the name was shortened by dropping the article, "de".

Sprint – from its parent company, southern pacific railroad internal communications. At the time, pipelines and railroad tracks were the cheapest place to lay communications lines, as the right-of-way was already leased or owned.

Sri international – from stanford research institute, established by the trustees of stanford university, california

Starbucks – named after starbuck, a character in herman melville's novel moby-dick, also a variation of starbo; at the time, a local mining camp north of seattle.

Subaru – from the japanese name for the constellation known to westerners as pleiades or the seven sisters. Subaru's parent company, fuji heavy industries, was formed from a merger of six companies, and the constellation is featured on

the company's logo.

Sun microsystems – its founders designed their first workstation in their dorm at stanford university, and chose the name stanford university network for their product, hoping to sell it to the college. They did not.

Suzuki – from the name of its founder, michio suzuki.

T

Taco bell – named after founder glen bell.

Tata group – conglomerate named after jamshedji tata, considered "the father of indian industry".

Tcs – from tata consultancy services, from india's tata group, named after founder and legendary industrialist jamshedji tata.

Tesco – founder jack cohen – who sold groceries in the markets of the london east end from 1919 – acquired a large shipment of tea from t. E. Stockwell. He made new labels by using the first three letters of the supplier's name and the

first two letters of his surname.

Toshiba – named from the merger of consumer goods company tokyo denki (tokyo electric co) and electrical firm shibaura seisaku-sho (shibaura engineering works).
 

Toyota – from the name of the founder, 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.

Twa – derived from trans world airlines. Before the airline opened up its first international route from new york to paris in the 1950s, it was a domestic operation that focused on serving los angeles and san francisco from new york, operating under the name transcontinental and western air. Keeping the initials and rebranding as a global airline was a stroke of marketing continuity genius.

Twinings – named after founder thomas twining, who set up a tea-shop on the strand in london in 1706.

Twitter – having rejected the name twitch for their social networking service, co-founder jack dorsey says: "we looked in the dictionary for words around it and we came across the word 'twitter' and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information', and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was."

U

Ubuntu foundation – named from a zulu word (ùɓúntú) that translates as "humanity to others".

Unilever – name created to reflect the merger of margarine unie and lever brothers, agreed in 1929. Lever brothers was named after its founders, william hesketh lever and his brother, james.

Unisys – from united information systems, the new name for the company that resulted from the merging of two old mainframe computer companies, burroughs and sperry [sperry univac/sperry rand]. It united two incompatible ranges. The newborn unisys was briefly the world's second-largest computer company, after ibm.

Uunet – one of the industry's oldest and largest internet service providers, named from unix-to-unix network.

V

Verizon – a portmanteau of veritas (latin for truth) and horizon.

Virgin – founder richard branson started a magazine called student while still at school. In his autobiography, losing my virginity, branson says that when they were starting a business to sell records by mail order, "one of the girls suggested: 'what about virgin? We're complete virgins at business.'"

Vodafone – from voice, data, telefone. Vodafone made the uk's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on 1 january 1985.

Volkswagen – from the german for people's car. Ferdinand porsche wanted to produce a car that was affordable for the masses – the kraft-durch-freude-wagen (or "strength-through-joy car", from a nazi social organization) later became

known, in english, as the beetle.

Volvo – from the latin word volvo, which means "i roll". It was originally a name for a ball bearing being developed by skf.

W           

Wal-mart – named after founder sam walton

Wells fargo – from the founders of the original wells fargo company, henry wells and william g. 
Fargo. (when norwest purchased wells fargo in 1998, it chose to retain the wells fargo name.)

Wendy's – wendy was the nickname of founder dave thomas' daughter melinda.

Wipro – from western india palm refined oil ltd wipro technologies. The company started as a modest vanaspati and laundry soap producer and is now also an it services giant.

Wwe – from the company's legal name of world wrestling entertainment, adopted in 2002; it began using the initialism as its trading name in 2011. The previous name of world wrestling federation (wwf), used since 1979, was changed after a

court case brought by the world wildlife fund (wwf), which is now called the world wide fund for nature.

X

Xerox – named from xerography, a word derived from the greek xeros (dry) and graphos (writing). The company was founded as the haloid company in 1906, launched its first xerox copier in 1949, and changed its name to haloid xerox in 1958.

Y

Yahoo! – the word yahoo was invented by jonathan swift and used in his book gulliver's travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. Yahoo! Founders david filo and jerry yang jokingly considered themselves yahoos. It's also an interjection sometimes associated with united states southerners' and westerners' expression of joy, as alluded to in yahoo.com commercials that end with someone singing the word "yahoo". It is also sometime jokingly referred to by its backronym, yet another hierarchical officious oracle.

Yamaha – after torakusu yamaha, who founded the company as nippon gakki seizō kabushiki gaisha (japan musical instrument manufacturing corporation) in 1897 after repairing a reed organ. The official name was changed to yamaha corporation

on 1 october 1987.

Z

Zuse – pioneering german computer company named after its founder, konrad zuse (1910–1995). He built his first computer in his parents' living room at the end of the 1930s. Zuse was taken over by siemens ag. The name is now supposedly

echoed by suse (software und system-entwicklung: "software and system development").