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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

CISCO: It’s commonly believed that it’s an

acronym, but it's really a short form for San Francisco.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

Compaq: The name came to be by using COMP which stands for computer, and PAQ

to denote a small integral object.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

Corel: The name was coined from the

founder's name, Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for Cowpland

Research Laboratory.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

SUN Microsystems:This was founded by 4 Stanford

University buddies. SUN stands for Stanford University Network.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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).

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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'.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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!Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

Zynga:Founder mark Pincus named his

company after his pet, an American Bulldog.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

Dell:The company was named after its

founder, Michael Dell.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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”.

Helping Digital Agencies and Startups get to £1M in recurring revenues - http://www.smartdigitalbusiness.com/

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