History behind famous international brands

      This post is informative as well as knowledge based. This will surely improve your talent score. I have collected history details of various well-known international brands related to automobile, cell phone, electronics, software industries. I am gonna tell you how these brands got their respective names.

ADOBE:

     One of the founders of Adobe, John Nack, lives in Los Altas in California. The river named Adobe runs behind his house. So, the company come up with this name.

APPLE:

     Founder Steve Jobs (working in an Apple Farm) decided to start his business, he joked with his friends that if they did not suggest a name for his company he will then name it as Apple Computers. His friends could not come out with a name and hence Steve named it as Apple Computers.


APACHE:

     Its founders were writing for NCSA's http domain and applying patches to code. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server, so they finally come near Apache. 


AMAZON:

     Jeff Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with "A" so that it could appear early i alphabetic order. He began looking through the dictionary and settled down "Amazon" because it was the river he considered the biggest in the world, as he hoped his company would be.


AUDI:

     Founder August Horch found a name for the company by translating his name, which means "Hark!", "Listen!" into latin. Horch's name was already in use by his previous car manufacturing company. Four rings represent the Auto union of Audi with DKW, Horch and Wanderer.

CANON:

      It is company;s first camera product actually named as "Kwanon". It is also matches with Japanese Buddhist Bodhisatva of Mercy. For simplicity of understanding, the name was changed to Canon from Kwanon.

COCA COLA:

      Coca means leaves and Kola are nuts. They are flaouring content in Coca Cola. Founder John Pemberton used 'K' instead of 'C' for better appearance.

E-BAY:

      Founder Omidyar tried to register the domain name by echobay.com, but found it already taken by Echo mines company (Gold mining company). So he chosen second priority Ebay.com.


GOOGLE:

     When Founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin created an online Search engine, they wished for Googol number of results. Googol represents a number which is 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Therefore they wanted to name it as googol. But when they submitted their project report for funding to an investor, the investor gave a cheque which was payable to ‘Google’ instead of Googol. So that was a spelling mistake. But Larry and Sergey decided to keep it as google and thats how the name came about. 

IBM:

     It actually lengthens as International Business Machines.

INTEL:

     Founder Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name it as “Moore Noyce” Later they found that there was another company with that name which ran a group of hotels. Therefore, they decided to look for another name. Then, They thought, for a semiconductor company this name could be a wrong name. Then for the first year they used ‘NM Electronics’ as their company name. Finally, Intel got its name as a short form of Integreated Electorinics.

JAVA:

     This name came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank. It was previously known as Oak derived from the tree that stood outside office. Java was selected from a list of suggestions taken from programmers by creator James Gosling.

LG:

      Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

LINUX:

     Founder Linus Torvalds replaced his custom Operating System by originally used Minix OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). As per his friends Ari Lemmke's  suggestion, he uploaded his OS on internet with a directory called Linux on his FTP server, as he un-liked the name Freax.

 
MOZILLA:

      Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a newly developed browser with Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer Godzilla).

MICROSOFT:

Bill Gates framed the Microsoft from Microcomputer + Software. In year 1975, Bill Gates wrote a letter to his colleague Paul Allen, he wrote as Micro-Soft. But in 1976 they registered the name Microsoft as a one whole name.

NOKIA:

     In early days, It was actually Wood-pulp mill, they started manufacturinf Rubber products in he Finnish city of Nokia.

NISSAN:

     Originally known as Nippon Sangyo meaning ‘Japan Industries’ renamed as Nissan.

NIKON:

     Originally known as Nippon Kogaku meaning ‘Japan Optical’ renamed as Nikon.

PEPSI:

      Its name comes with an enzyme name Pepsin used in it.

REEBOK:

     An Afrikaans word Rhebok meaning a type of African Antelope.

SKYPE:

     It is short form of Sky Peer-topeer. Then it somes with name Skyper and then with famous name Skype.

SONY:

     Latin word “Sonus” meaning Sound. Other reference says that ‘sonny’ is slang word used in America to bright youngster.

SEGA:

     American founder Marty Bromley used to import pinball games to Japan for American military bases. It is shot form of SErvice GAmes.

UNIX:

      When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS. They needed the OS to run the game Space War that was compiled under MULTICS. It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.

VIRGIN:

      A girl suggested this name to founder Richard Branson saying, ”What about Virgin? We are completely virgin at business.”

VODAFONE:

      It is combination of VOice+DAta+telephone

VOLKSWAGEN:

     Its literally meaning in German language is “People’s car”

WALMART:

      Walmart is named after founder Sam WALton.

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...!!:

     “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” was actual name of Yahoo. In 1994 it changed its name to Yahoo. Originally, name was taken from Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels. It's short form is “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. This word also refers to a barbaric and uncivilized youth.

Some of the content is referred from: Boredpanda.com