How Some Popular Tech Companies Got Their Names

How Some Popular
Tech Companies
Got Their Names

Skype -
The original concept was Sky-Peer-to-
Peer™, which was later changed into
Skyper... then Skype.
Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

Adobe:
Contrary to popular belief, this was not
named after the rock, adobe. Rather, it’
s the name of the river Adobe Creek
that ran behind the house of founder
John Warnock.

CISCO:
It’s commonly believed that it’s an
acronym, but it's really a short form
for San Francisco.

Compaq:
The name came to be by using COMP
which stands for computer, and PAQ
to denote a small integral object.

Corel:
The name was coined from the
founder's name, Dr. Michael
Cowpland. It stands for Cowpland
Research Laboratory.

Google:
It was originally named 'Googol', a word
for the number represented by 1 followed
by 100 zeros. But after founders Sergey
Brin and Larry Page presented their
project to an angel investor, they received
a cheque made out to 'Google'. Instead of
returning the cheque, they decided to
change the company name to Google.

Hewlett Packard:
Founders Bill Hewlett and Dave
Packard agreed to toss a coin to decide
whether the company they founded
would be called Hewlett-Packard or
Packard-Hewlett. Obviously, Bill
Hewlett won.

Microsoft:
Bill Gates named the company to
represent it was devoted to
MICROcomputer SOFTware. It was
originally christened Micro-Soft
where the '-' was removed later on.

Intel:
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore originally
wanted to name their company 'Moore
Noyce' but a hotel chain already
trademarked it, so they had to settle for
an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

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.

Apple Computers:
Steve Jobs was 3 months late for filing a
name for the business, and he decided to
call his company Apple Computers if his
other colleagues didn't suggest a better
name by 5 o'clock. Apple, incidentally, is
said to be Job’s fave fruit.

Yahoo:
The word from Jonathan Swift’s 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
believe they are yahoos.

Xerox:
The Greek root word “xer” means dry.
Inventor Chester Carlson named his
product Xerox as it does dry copying,
markedly different from the then
more popular wet copying.

SUN Microsystems:
This was founded by 4 Stanford
University buddies. SUN stands for
Stanford University Network.

Oracle:
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats worked on a
consulting project for the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). The project
was code-named Oracle. (The CIA
intended this as the system to give
answers to all questions, or something
like that).

Hotmail:
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of
accessing email from a computer
anywhere in the world. Sabeer Bhatia
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.

Lotus (Notes):
Mitch Kapor, who used to be a teacher
of transcendental Meditation of
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, got the name
for his company from 'The Lotus
Position' or 'Padmasana'.

SAP:
SAP stands for "Systems, Applications,
Products in Data Processing". This was
founded by 4 ex-IBM employees who
used to work in the
'Systems/Applications/Projects' group
of IBM.

Red Hat:
Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse
team cap (with red and white stripes)
while at college by his grandfather. He lost
it and had to search for it desperately. The
manual of the beta version of Red Hat
Linux had an appeal to readers to return
his Red Hat if found by anyone!

Apache:
It got its name because its founders
got started by applying patches to
code written for NCSA’s httpd
daemon. The result was ‘A PAtCHy’
server; thus, the name Apache.

Amazon:
Jeff Bezos wanted a name for his
company that starts with letter “A”, when
he searched the dictionary, the name
“Amazon” caught his attention as it’s the
biggest river in the world, something he’d
want his company to be.

Asus:
Company founder Jonney Shih,
said the name is taken from the
final letters of "Pegasus," the
magical creature born out of the
blood of Medusa.

Go Daddy:
The company was initially called Jomax
Technologies. Until they decided to
change it to Big Daddy, presumably
initially as a joke, upon realizing that
the name was already taken, they
decided to go for Go Daddy.

Zynga:
Founder mark Pincus named his
company after his pet, an American
Bulldog.

Dell:
The company was named after its
founder, Michael Dell.

Acer:
The company was initially called
Multitech International in 1976. It
was changed to Acer in 1987 which is
a Latin word for “sharp, acute, able
and facile”.

For information on how I can help your
digital agency
or startup
get to £1M in recurring revenues,
click here:
http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com
References: Hongkiat , Bored Panda , PC World & The Atlantic

How Some Popular Tech Companies Got Their Names

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How Some Popular Tech Companies Got Their Names