How Businesses Got Their Names

Ever wonder how certain businesses chose their names?
Behind every name there is a story.

Apple Computers
It was the 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.

CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco.

Compaq
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and
PAQ to denote a small integral object.

Corel
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr.Michael Cowpland.
It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.

Google
The name started as a joke boasting 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 graduate
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 uppercasing.

Hewlett Packard
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.

Microsoft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was 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
It originated 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.

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.

Source : www.berro.com

Quote of the Day:

"Success is not counted by how high you have climbed
but by how many you brought with you." - Wil Rose