Neither did I :)
But it was still kinda fun to go over this list of how companies got their names.
Here are my 10 favorite company name "stories" from that list:
- Adidas- from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
- Adobe- came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke .
- BenQ- Bringing ENjoyment and Quality to life
- Cisco- short for San Francisco. It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co" -- Computer Information Services was the department at Stanford University that the founders worked in.
- Fanta- was originally invented by Max Keith in Germany in 1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola syrup to Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors thought that imagination was needed to taste oranges from the strange mix.
- Fiat- acronym of Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Factory of Cars of Turin).
- Mozilla Foundation- from the name of the web-browser that preceded Netscape Navigator. When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) by Jamie Zawinski.
- Pepsi- Pepsi derives its name from (treatment of) dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment.
- Samsonite- Samsonite was launched as a brand in 1941, receiving its name from the Biblical character Samson, renowned for his strength.
- 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.
