* 20th Century Fox – Film studio; formed in 1935 through the merger of William Fox's Fox Film, and Twentieth Century Pictures.
* 23andme – Using the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up each person's genome, the company helps individuals make sense of their own (me) genome.
* 37signals – Web development company; named for the 37 radio telescope signals identified by astronomer Paul Horowitz as potential messages from extraterrestrial intelligence.
* 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 a.m. until 11:00 p.m.
*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 January 1, 2001, the company was called Andersen Consulting.
*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.
*Aldi – portmanteau for Albrecht (name of the founders) and discount
*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.)
*AMC Theatres – American Multi-Cinema: the company pioneered multi-screen cinemas.
*AMD – Advanced Micro Devices
*Amiga Corporation - The original developers of the 16-bit Amiga computer chose the name, which means a 'female friend' in Spanish and Portuguese, because it sounded friendly, and because it came before rivals (Apple Inc. and Atari) 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."
*Apple – For the favorite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard, and to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time – which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract
*Apricot Computers – early UK-based microcomputer company founded by ACT (Applied Computer Techniques), a business software and services supplier. The company wanted a "fruity" name (Apple and Acorn were popular brands) that included the letters A, C and T. Apricot fit the bill.
*Asda – Asda Stores Limited was founded as Associated Dairies & Farm Stores Ltd in 1949. However the formation of the Asda name occurred in 1965 with the merger of the Asquith chain of three supermarkets and Associated Dairies; Asda is an abbreviation of Asquith and Dairies, a large UK supermarket chain that is now a subsidiary of Wal-Mart.
*ASICS – an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, which, translated from Latin, means "Healthy soul in a healthy body". Originally the citation is mens sana in corpore sano, but MSICS does not sound as good.
*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.
*Asus – named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The first three letters of the word were dropped to get a high position in alphabetical listings. An Asus company named Pegatron, using the spare letters, was spun off in 2008.
*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.
*Atari – named from the board game Go. "Atari" is a Japanese word to describe a position where an opponent's stones are in danger of being captured. It is similar, though not identical, to "check" in chess. The original games company was American but wanted a Japanese-sounding name.
*ATI – Array Technologies Incorporated
*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!".
*Bauknecht – founded as an electrotechnical workshop in 1919 by Gottlob Bauknecht, and now a Whirlpool brand.
*Bayer – named after Friedrich Bayer, who founded the company in 1863.
*BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation, originally British Broadcasting Company.
*BCC Research – from the company's former name, Business Communications Company.
*BEA Systems – from the first initial of each of the company's three founders: Bill Coleman, Ed Scott and Alfred Chuang.
*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
*BMW – Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Factories).
*Boeing – named after founder William E. Boeing. It was originally called Pacific Aero Products Co.
*BOSCH (full company name Robert Bosch GmbH) - named after founder Robert Bosch. A German diversified technology-based corporation.
*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.)
*BRAC – Bangladesh Rural & Advancement Committee, world's largest NGO (non governmental organization).
*Bridgestone – named after founder Shojiro Ishibashi. The surname Ishibashi (石橋) means "stone bridge", or "bridge of stone".
* BT – formerly British Telecom (from BT Group, formerly British Telecommunications plc.)
*Bull – Compagnie des machines Bull was founded in Paris to exploit the patents for punched card machines taken out by Norwegian engineer Fredrik Rosing Bull.
*BHEL - Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, a government of India company.
*CA – Computer Associates was founded in 1976 as Computer Associates International, Inc. by Charles Wang
*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.
*Caterpillar – Originally Holt Tractor Co, merged with Best Tractor Co. in 1925. A company photographer exclaimed aloud of a Holt tractor that the tracks' movement resembled a caterpillar moving along the ground. The name stuck.
*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
*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.
*Cisco – short for San Francisco. It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co": Computer Information Services was the department at Stanford University where the founders worked.
*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.
*CRC Press – originally Chemical Rubber Company
*Cromemco – early microcomputer company in Silicon Valley (circa 1975–198?) founded by two PhD students who once lived at Stanford University's Crothers Memorial Hall (a dormitory).
*CVS – Convenience Value Service.
*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.
*Dynegy – the Natural Gas Clearinghouse changed its name in 1998 to reflect its self-described traits as a dynamic energy company. "Dynergy" had already been taken by a German health foods company.
*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" didn't 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.
*ESPN – Entertainment and Sports Programming Network
*ESRI – Environmental Systems Research Institute, the first geographic information system (GIS) software company founded by Jack and Laura Dangermond in Redlands, California, in 1969
*Epson – Epson Seiko Corporation, the Japanese printer and peripheral manufacturer, was named from "Son of Electronic Printer"
*FCUK – French Connection United Kingdom.
*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)
*Fluke – named after its founder, John Fluke, Sr.
*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.
*GEICO – from Government Employees Insurance Company
*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
*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.
*Haier – Chinese 海 "sea" and 尔 (a transliteration character; also means "you" in Literary Chinese).
*H&M – named from Hennes & Mauritz. In 1947, Swedish businessman Erling Persson established Hennes, a ladies' clothing store, in Västerås, Sweden. "Hennes" is Swedish for "hers". In 1968, Persson bought the Stockholm premises and inventory of a hunting equipment store called Mauritz Widforss. The inventory included a collection of men's clothing, which prompted Persson to expand into menswear.
*HCL – Hindustan Computers Ltd, Indian software company founded by Shiv Nadar.
*Hess Corporation – named after its founder Leon Hess.
*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"
*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. (If you click on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you will still find "HoTMaiL" in the URL.)
*HSBC – Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
*Hyundai – connotes the sense of "the present age" or "modernity" in Korean.
*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.
*ICICI – Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India.
*ICL – abbreviation for International Computers Limited, once the UK's largest computer company but now a service arm of Fujitsu, of Japan.
*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)
*Ittiam Systems – an Indian company named from the famous philosophical dictum: "I think therefore I am" (Cogito, ergo sum).
*Infosys – An Indian software major. "Information Systems"
*JAL – from Japan Airlines
*Jat Airways – founded in 1927 as "Aeroput" (Airway in Serbian). From 1947, it was known as JAT (Jugoslovenski Aero Transport). After the break-up of the former Yugoslavia (and after Federal Republic of Yugoslavia changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro), the company kept the name, Jat, but not as an abbreviation.
*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
*Kawasaki – from the name of its founder, Shozo Kawasaki
*KFC – short for Kentucky Fried Chicken. It is popularly believed that the company adopted the abbreviated name in 1991 to avoid the unhealthy connotations of the word 'fried'. The rumor that it was because the Commonwealth of Kentucky trademarked the name "Kentucky" is false. Recent commercials have tried to imply that the abbreviation stands for "Kitchen Fresh Chicken".
*Kenwood Limited – named after Kenneth (Ken) Wood, who founded this kitchenware company as Woodlau Industries in the UK in 1947. It is not related to Kenwood Electronics, which started as Kasuga Radio Co in Japan in 1946 and became Trio Corporation in 1960.
*Kia Motors – the name "Kia" (起亞) roughly translates as "Rising from Asia" in Hanja.
*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.
*Konica – it was earlier known as Konishiroku Kogaku. Konishiroku in turn is the short for Konishiya Rokubeiten which was the first name of the company established by Rokusaburo Sugiura in the 1850s.
*Kyocera – from Kyoto Ceramics, after Kyoto in Japan.
*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.
*Level 3 Communications – "Level 3" is a reference to the network layer of the OSI model.
*LG – from the combination of two popular Korean brands, Lucky and Goldstar. (In Mexico, publicists explained the name change as an abbreviation to Linea Goldstar, Spanish for Goldstar Line)
*L'Oréal – In 1907, Eugène Schueller, a young French chemist, developed an innovative hair-color formula. He called his improved hair dye Auréole.
*LOT – LOT Polish Airlines. "Lot" in Polish means "flight".
*Lotus Software – Mitch Kapor named his company after the Lotus Position or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
* Lycos – from Lycosidae, the family of wolf spiders.
*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.
*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. This theory is supported by the fact that the company is referred to only as "Matsuda" in Japan.
*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.
*MG Cars – from Morris Garages after co-founder William Morris. Under Chinese ownership, the company says: "We want Chinese consumers to know this brand as 'Modern Gentleman'."
*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.
*Midway Games – derived from the name of an airport on the southwestern part of Chicago.
*Minolta – Minolta was founded in Osaka, Japan in 1928 as Nichi-Doku Shashinki Shōten (日独写真機商店; literally: Japan-Germany camera shop). It was not until 1934 that the name Minolta first appeared on a camera, the Minolta Vest.
*MIPS – originally stood for Microprocessor without Interlocking Pipeline Stages. When interlocks where added to a later implementation, the name was redefined to not be an acronym but just a name. (The name also connotes computer speed, by association with the acronym for millions of instructions per second.)
*Mitel – from Mike and Terry's Lawnmowers, after the founders Michael Cowpland (see also: Corel) and Terry Matthews, and the company's original business plan.
*MITRE – Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Establishment (however The MITRE Corporation asserts that its name is not an acronym)
*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.
*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 University of Illinois threatened to sue for trademark infringement over the use of the Mosaic name. Netscape is the combination of network and landscape.
*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 (任天堂). The first two (nin-ten) can be translated to "entrusted to heaven"; dou is a common ending meaning "hall" or "store".
*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.
*Nortel Networks – named from Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Bay Networks. The company was originally spun off from the Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd in 1895 as Northern Electric and Manufacturing, and traded as Northern Electric from 1914 to 1976.
*Novartis – after the Latin expression "novae artes" which means something like "new skills".
*Novell – Novell, Inc. was earlier Novell Data Systems co-founded by George Canova. The name was suggested by George's wife who mistakenly thought that "Novell" meant new in French. (Nouvelle is the feminine form of the French adjective 'Nouveau'. Nouvelle as a noun in French is 'news'.)
*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 CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or some such). 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.
*Pennzoil – formed by a merger of South Penn Oil (Penn), a former Standard Oil subsidiary, and Zapata Oil (zoil).
*Pepsi – named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
*Philco – from the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company. The pioneering U.S. radio and television manufacturer was taken over by Ford and later by Philips.
*Philips – Royal Philips Electronics was founded in 1891 by brothers Gerard (the engineer) and Anton (the entrepreneur) Philips.
*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 Ferry Porsche, son of the 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.
*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.
*Qantas – from its original name, Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
*Qimonda – Qimonda carries different meanings and allows associations in different languages. "Qi" stands for flowing or breathing energy, while the combination of the English word "key" and the Latin "mundus" is intuitively understood in the Western World as "key to the world".
*Quad – an acronym for Quality Unit Amplified Domestic. Quad Electroacoustics was founded in 1936 by Peter Walker, and was formerly called the Acoustical Manufacturing Company.
*Quark – named after an atomic particle. The word quark originates from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.
*Qualcomm – Quality Communication
*QVC – Quality, Value and Convenience
*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.
*Reebok – alternate spelling of rhebok (Pelea capreolus), an African antelope.
*REO Motor Car Company – car manufacturer founded in 1904 by Ransom E. Olds, and named from its founder's initials. Later, the rock band REO Speedwagon took its name from one of its trucks, the REO Speed Wagon.
*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.
*SAAB – founded in 1937 in Sweden as Svenska Aeroplan aktiebolaget (Swedish Aeroplane Company); the last word is typically abbreviated as AB, hence SAAB.
*Samsonite – named from the Biblical character Samson, renowned for his strength.
*Samsung – meaning three stars in Korean.
* Sanyo – meaning three oceans in Japanese.
*SGI – Silicon Graphics Inc.
*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 were already importing Japanese shells when they 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 Skoda Works, an industrial conglomerate, in 1924, and adopted the Škoda name from Emil Skoda. 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.
*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.
*Starbucks – named after Starbuck, a character in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick
*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 didn't.
*Suzuki – from the name of its founder, Michio Suzuki.
*Tata Group – conglomerate named after Jamsetji Tata, considered "the father of Indian industry".
*TCS – from Tata Consultancy Services, from India's Tata Group, named after founder and legendary industrialist Jamsetji Tata.
*TDK Corporation – from Tokyo Denki Kagaku (Tokyo Electronics and Chemicals).
*THX – from Tomlinson Holman Crossover, the name of the technology's inventor and the audio technology of a crossover amplifier. It may be a backronym, as the technology is owned by George Lucas's company, and he directed THX 1138.
*TIBCO Software – The Information Bus Company. The company was founded by Vivek Ranadive as Teknekron Software Systems in 1985.
*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.
*Unilever – name created to reflect the merger of Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers, agreed in 1929. Lever Brothers was named from its founders, William Hesketh Lever and his brother, James.
*UNIMED – Brazilian cooperative of physicians, meaning União de Medicos (Physicians' Union)
*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 new-born Unisys was briefly the world's second-largest computer company, after IBM.
*Unocal Corporation – the Union Oil Company of California, founded in 1890
*UUNET – one of the industry's oldest and largest Internet Service Providers, named from UNIX-to-UNIX Network.
*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.
*Wal-Mart – named after founder Sam Walton
*Wipro – from Western India Vegetable Products Limited. The company started as a modest Vanaspati and laundry soap producer and is now also an IT services giant.
*WWE – World Wrestling Entertainment, formerly World Wrestling Federation (WWF). It changed its name after a court case brought by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which is now called the World Wide Fund for Nature.
*Worlds of Wonder – founder Don Kingsborough wanted an eyecatching stock symbol, and Worlds Of Wonder provided WOW. The company went bankrupt in 1988.
*WPP – Global advertising and marketing company. Originally called Wire and Plastic Products.
*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.
Z
*Zend Technologies – a contraction derived from the names of Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, the two founders.
*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")..
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