How 43 famous companies got their names.

Adidas 

The name comes from that of its founder, Adolf (“Adi”) Dassler (“das”). His brother Rudi founded Puma.

Adobe

John Warnock and Charles Geschke, two entrepreneurs who had worked together at Xerox PARC, launched Adobe in 1982 inside Warnock’s garage, which happened to be located next to Adobe Creek in Los Altos.

Amazon

In the early days of the web, website listings were alphabetized, so Jeff Bezos was eyeing words that started with “A.”

Amazon seemed like a perfect name for a business marketed as earth’s largest bookstore.  In fact, the Amazon river is featured prominently in the company’s first logo.

That said, there were several domains registered during the name selection process, including Awake, Browse and Bookmall.

There was also Relentless, which if you go to that page, still takes you directly to Amazon.

And, of course, there was “Cadabra,” which was based on “abracadabra” — which was dropped, when Bezos’ lawyer thought he said “cadaver.”

Apple

Jobs picked the name during one of his fruitarian diets, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs. He had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded “fun, spirited and not intimidating.”  A viral video clip of Jobs from 1980 adds to the naming story: “I picked Apple partly because I like apples and because it’s ahead of Atari in the phone book...I used to work at Atari.”

Arby’s

The Arby’s name is based on “R. B.,” which represents its founders —  the Raffel Brothers, Leroy and Forrest, who founded the Georgia-based fast food chain in 1964.

Atari

The name comes from a Japanese term used while playing the ancient board game, Go.  Atari founder Nolan Bushnell was a big admirer of the game.  In Go, a state known as ‘atari’ occurs when a player’s stones are in danger of being taken by their opponent.

Audi

Audi was founded by August Horch, who had used his surname in previous businesses, but was legally prohibited from doing so when starting his new car company.  Horch, in German, means listen.  And while brainstorming name ideas at a friend’s house, his friend’s son suggested audi, which means listen in Latin. 

Baskin-Robbins

Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins were brothers-in-law.  They started out opening their own ice cream shops.  Irv started Snowbird Ice Cream and Burt launched Burton Ice Cream Shop.  Both were successful. And as the number of stores grew, they decided to drop the separate identities and the stores all became Baskin-Robbins.

BlackBerry

A year before the release of its game-changing device, Research In Motion hired a California company, Lexicon Branding, to come up with a name.  Leixcon is known for naming products such as Procter & Gamble’s Swiffer, Verizon’s FIOS, Apple’s PowerBook and Coca-Cola’s Dasani.  The name that stuck was based on the black color of the device and the shape of its keyboard, which looked like the seeds of a berry.

Bridgestone

Bridgestone was founded by Japanese entrepreneur Shojiro Ishibashi, whose name “Ishibashi,” when translated, means “Stone Bridge.”

Cisco

"Cisco" is short for San Francisco, the city where Stanford computer scientists Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner founded the company in 1984. Cisco's logo represents the Golden Gate Bridge, with the two taller lines of the logo representing the towers.

Comcast

Cable industry pioneer Ralph Roberts originally founded the company in 1963 as American Cable Systems.  But he wanted a name that would reflect a broader technological scope. So he blended the words “communications” and “broadcast.” 

CVS

It stands for “Consumer Value Store,” which is how CVS started out started — a scrappy discount health and beauty outlet in Lowell, Mass., in 1963.

eBay

Founder Pierre Omidyar initially launched his auction site as AuctionWeb, but changed the name to eBay. It was based on his one-man consulting firm, Echo Bay. The website for Echo Bay was taken, so he shortened it to eBay.

Etsy

Etsy founder Rob Kalin was looking for what he called a "nonsensical word because I wanted to build the brand from scratch.” While watching the film "8 1/2," by director Federico Fellini, he heard what he thought was "et si." What he actually heard was "e si,"  (“oh yes”) which can still sound like "Etsy" to non-Italian speakers, but the name stuck.

Google

In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin initially called their search engine “BackRub,” because it analyzed the web’s “back links” to determine how important a website was.  But they felt a better name was needed, to reflect the amount of data they were indexing.  When fellow Stanford student Sean Anderson suggested “googolplex,” Page countered with “googol.”  Both words reference large numbers. After an accidental search for the “google” domain name, they decided they preferred that spelling anyway.

Addendum: The new parent company name Alphabet was selected because it is a collection of letters that represent language, which Page has called “one of humanity's most important innovations…and the core of how we index with Google search.” Page has also noted they like the double-entendre of “alpha‑bet ,” with alpha representing an investment return above the benchmark.

Häagen-Dazs

After working in his family ice cream business, Bronx, New York-based entrepreneur Reuben Mattus started Häagen-Dazs in the 1960s, along with his wife Rose. Mattus made up what he thought was a Danish-sounding name because he thought it represented old-world traditions and craftsmanship. He added an umlaut even though that punctuation mark doesn't exist in the Danish language, because he felt it would make his product stand out.

Hasbro

In 1923, the Hassenfeld Brothers started a textile company. Two decades later, Hasbro shifted its focus to making toys.  The company name was shortened to Hasbro Industries, Inc.

IKEA

IKEA is an acronym. “IK” are the initials of the furniture company’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad. The “EA” represent Kamprad’s childhood – Elmtaryd is the name of the farm on which he grew up, and Agunnaryd is the name of his village.

Instagram

Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom initially launched a check-in app called Burbn. Photo sharing quickly became Burbn’s most popular feature. So 6 months later, Krieger and System pivoted and launched a new app called Instagram — a blending of “instant camera” and “telegram.”

Lego

In 1916, carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen opened a shop that made ladders, stools and ironing boards. But after personal tragedies and financial disasters, Christiansen needed to use his remaining wood to make inexpensive goods, such as toys. The name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the Danish words “leg godt,” meaning “play well”.

Microsoft 

Given the opportunity Paul Allen and Bill Gates saw to create software for microcomputers, a name that bridged those worlds was a no-brainer.  Initially, it was even more obvious, given the hyphenated spelling “Micro-Soft.”  That’s not to say they didn’t toss around a few name ideas, such as Outcorporated Inc. and Unlimited Ltd.  There was also a discussion around whether they should call the company Allen & Gates, but since computer industry giants such as IBM weren’t named after their founders, they went with Microsoft.  Plus, Allen & Gates sounded  more like a law firm or a consulting company, which Microsoft certainly was not.

Nike

Originally, Nike was known as Blue Ribbon Sports.  It was the U.S. distributor for Onitsuka Tiger (which would later become known as Asics).  But when Phil Knight decided to manufacture his own shoes, the company needed a new name.  Knight happened to like the name “Dimension Six.”

Other suggestions included "Peregrine" (a type of falcon) and “Bengal", but neither generated much enthusiasm.

Knight’s coworker Jeff Johnson felt iconic brands, such as Clorox, Kleenex and Xerox had short names that were two syllables or less.  And, that having a strong sound in the name from letters such as “K” or “X” often helped.

Johnson pitched "Nike", named after the Greek winged goddess of victory.

Since they needed a name quickly, Nike was selected.  Although Knight wasn’t completely sold at the start.

"Maybe it'll grow on us," he later recalled.

Nokia 

Nokia started out as an operator of paper mills, with one of them based near the town of Nokia.

Nvidia

Founders Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem couldn't think of a name so they labeled all their files "NV," which stood for "next version." However, the company still needed a name, so they researched words containing those two letters. They landed on “invidia,” which means envy in Latin.  That theme can be seen in the company’s marketing, including its use of green (ie. green with envy).

Qualcomm

Professor turned entrepreneur Irwin Jacobs helped lead a startup-minded group of colleagues from a previous business (Linkabit), with a goal of delivering “quality communication” — hence the name, Qual-comm.

Reebok

In 1958, Joe Foster and his brother, Jeff, decided the family shoe company they inherited from their father needed a re-band.  They settled on the name Mercury, like the winged messenger of the gods. However, another shoe company had registered the name. Looking through a South African dictionary, he found the word “reebok,” which is a type of antelope or gazelle (note the spelling in most dictionaries is “rhebok”).  Forster later explained he liked the word because it was short, catchy and easy to pronounce.  And it suggested light, but fast and agile.

7-Eleven

7-Eleven’s roots go back to an ice shop operator in Texas called Southland Ice Company.  As demand to sell groceries grew, the name “Tote’m Stores” was used, with a large totem pole representing the T in the logo.  Eventually, a marketing firm suggested a name it thought might better unite all of the company’s locations.  It felt if store operators could stay open from 7am to 11pm seven days a week, the stores could be called 7-Eleven.

Samsung 

Founder Lee Byung-Chul began by selling fish and fruit, but there was plenty of ambition from the start.  The initial corporate logo had “three stars,” which is what the word Samsung means. Byung-Chul’s vision was for his company to become powerful and everlasting like stars in the sky.

Skype 

The name evolved from “Sky peer-to-peer,” based on its software designed to make free phone calls on the Internet.  Initially, the acronym “Skyper” was picked, but another domain with the same name existed, so the “r” was deleted and Skyper became Skype.

Sony

The company was originally called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo KK (the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). But when founders Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita saw an opportunity to build pocket radios for the masses, they wanted an international name. They picked “Sony," which was a play on "sonus," the Latin word for “sound," and “sonny boys,” which was a nickname for smart young men. Combined, the name was meant to represent a group of young innovators in the area of sound.

SpaceX

As Elon Musk has noted, it’s an abbreviation of the company’s official name — Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. 

Spotify 

It is often said to be a blending of the words “spot” and “identify,” although Forbes said in 2012 that when co-founder Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon were spitballing names from two different rooms in Ek’s apartment, Ek misheard one of Lorentzon’s suggestions. He typed the word “Spotify” into Google, it was available so they registered the name.

Starbucks 

According to co-founder Gordon Bowker, the original name for the chain was going to be Cargo House, which he told the Seattle Times would’ve been a “terrible mistake.”  Pequod, the whaling ship in Moby Dick was also considered. Bowker and an advertising industry friend compiled a list of words that began with “st,’ believing it could be a powerful prefix.  When an old mining town called Starbo was mentioned, it reminded Bowker of Starbuck, the first mate on the Pequod in Moby Dick.  The Starbucks name also inspired the company’s green and white logo, which features a Siren from Greek mythology. Sirens in those stories lured sailors to shipwrecks, one of which was located off the coast of Starbuck Island in the South Pacific.

Taco Bell

The fast food chain is named after its founder, entrepreneur Glen Bell Jr, who had launched a drive-in after studying the success of the fast growing McDonald’s.  Bell saw an opportunity beyond burgers and launched several successful taco drive-ins and restaurants with other partners before launching Taco Bell in 1962.

Tesla

Named, of course, after inventor Nikola Tesla, an older version of Tesla’s website states “without Tesla‘s vision and brilliance, our car wouldn't be possible. We're confident that if he were alive today, Nikola Tesla would look over our 100 percent electric car and nod his head with both understanding and approval.”

The Gap

In 1969, Don and Dorish Fisher opened a store in San Francisco, selling jeans alongside records and tapes to what they felt was an underserved market — teens and college kids. While Don thought about calling the store “Pants and Discs,” Doris came up with “The Gap,” as a shorthand for generation gap.

Twitter 

You may have heard some of the various names that were thrown around — status, smssy, even friendstalker! In the end, the origins of the Twitter name have much to do with the initial buzzing that accompanied a tweet.  Jack Dorsey has previously noted that receiving tweets over SMS would prompt your phone to buzz…or jitter.  Or twitch.  Forgotten co-founder Noah Glass, according to Dorsey, started in the dictionary at twitch and worked his way down the list of names.  The word twitter was described as “a short inconsequential burst of information” and “chirps from birds.”  Dorsey later said it was an easy choice.

Uber

Uber's name comes from the German word über, meaning "above all the rest," a principle co-founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp wanted for their new company.

Verizon

A merging of telecommunications companies led to the creation of Verizon, which was a name selected after a search of roughly 8,500 possibilities. It’s based on the Latin two words —  "veritas," which leans into truth and reliability — and "horizon," which speaks to the possibilities ahead.

Volkswagen 

The German translation for “volks” is people, and “wagen” means car. So, Volkswagen stands for the people’s car. 

Yahoo!

Yahoo! started out as a project between Jerry Yang and fellow grad student David Filo, which they called "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." The two eventually changed the name to Yahoo!, claiming it was an acronym for "Yet another hierarchical officious oracle."

Zara

When Zara founder Amancio Ortega was searching for a name for his first fashion store, he picked ‘Zorba' based on the 1964 film Zorba the Greek.  However, there was a bar called Zorba nearby and its owner complained that customers would be confused.  Since Ortega had already made the molds for the letters in his sign, he rearranged them to see what they could come up with.  And Zara was the winner.