Have you ever wondered how companies have come up with their names, or what does a company name stand for? There are lots of companies that are known world wide and just by mentioning their name you can instantly visualize their logo, products or any other element that is relevant and linked to the name. We have briefly talked about the importance of choosing a good company name and also the elements that need to be taken into account for the success of the business/product when choosing it.
Here is how some of the big companies chose their names:
We all like them , wear them and instantly can identify the type of products they create when we hear “Adidas”. The story behind the company name? Not much to tell: Adolf (ADI) DASsler. See what they did? There are many others who chose their company name after the names of their founders such as the car manufacturer Chrysler whose founder was Walter P. Chrysler, Citroen after André-Gustave Citroën, The Walt Disney Company form the co-founder Walt Disney, and the list could go on.
Carrefour, the big chain of supermarkets got it’s name after the place where the first store was opened: a crossroads – carrefour in french. How about that?
Other companies choose use acronyms. There are lots and lots of such examples: Fiat – Fabrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Automobile Factory of Turin), IBM – International Business Machines, ESPN – Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, DKNY – Donna Karen New York, and so on.
Some companies choose names for their products or the company itself that have an interesting meaning in their language or a foreign one. Hyunday for example, in Korean, means “the present age” or “modernity”. The same thing works for Daewoo that means “Great Universe”. AltaVista is also a company name chosen on the same criteria, meaning “High View” in Spanish.
Yahoo has a nice story! The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in Guliver’s Travels, representing a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo founders, considered themselves yahoos, hence the name. Viewed form another point of view, Yahoo is also an interjection associated with US Southerners’ and Westerners’ expression of joy, that’s why you can hear someone singing “Yahoo” at the end of their commercials.
This is how some big companies chose their names. If you find yourself lacking inspiration use our Company Name Generator!