How Some Companies got their names ..

This article has been posted by Gangadhar Ambati ,

We all have a childlike love of playing with words, adding bits, Lego-style, to create new ones.And we often wonder where words come from and how they are formed.The answers can be found in a good dictionary or in any other related one.But some times I wonder how some companies got their names. Do you ever think about it? Then here you can find some info....

Apple Computers - 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 The Other Colleagues Didn't Suggest A Better Name By 5 O'clock.

C - Dennis Ritchie Improved On The B Programming Language And Called It 'New B'. He Later Called It C. Earlier B Was Created By Ken Thompson As A Revision Of The Bon Programming Language (Named After His Wife Bonnie).

CISCO - Its Not An Acronymn But The Short For San Francisco.


Compaq - Using Comp, For Computer, And PAQ To Denote A Small Integral Object.

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'!

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 Upper Casing.

HP - Bill Hewlett And Dave Packard Tossed A Coin To Decide Whether The Company They Founded Would Be Called Hewlett-Packard Or Packard-Hewlett.

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.

Java - Originally Called Oak By Creator James Gosling, From The Tree That Stood Outside His Window, The Programming Team Had To Look For A Substitute As There Was Another Language With The Same Name. Java Was Selected From A List Of Suggestions. It Came From The Name Of The Coffee That The Programmers Drank.

Linux - Linus Torvalds Originally Used The Minix OS On His System Which He Replaced By His OS. Hence The Working Name Was Linux (Linus' Minix). He Thought The Name To Be Too Egotistical And Planned To Name It Freax(Free + Freak + X). His Friend Ari Lemmke Encouraged Linus To Upload It To A Network So It Could Be Easily Downloaded. Ari Gave Linus A Directory Called Linux On His FTP Server, As He Did Not Like The Name Freax. (Linus' Parents Named Him After Two-Time Nobel Prize Winner Linus Pauling)

Microsoft - 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 Something Such). 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 Kept The Same Name For The Company.

Sony - 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 Stanford 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.

3M - Minnesota Mining And Manufacturing Company Started Off By Mining The Material Corundum Used To Make Sandpaper.