How Companies got their names
Posted by Jeu George on May 30th, 2006
I have heard many interesting stories of how companies come up with their names. Here’s a pretty exhaustive list of etymologies. My favorite one:
Apple — for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call the company Apple Computer if his colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 p.m. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time — which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract — in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different. Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle’s Apple Corps to use the name ‘Apple’ and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name ‘Macintosh’ (’Mac’).
May 30th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Dude, good to know that you have also started blogging. I noticed that you are running WP - what theme is this? I like it - plain and simple.
BTW - most likely, Gaurav and I should be in the US (and visiting Seattle for a couple of days) towards end of the next month. Are you guys going to be in Seattle then?
May 30th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
I am using the WP-Andreas09 2.0 theme with a few tweaks. I like it’s use of screen real estate.
Yeah, I think we should be here until alteast June 30th, We may go out for the July 4th weekend. You guys can camp at my place.
BTW, whats the occasion.. I see a release coming along
May 30th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Let me also try that theme.
Yeah - release is a major reason. And then there are some conferences also - that will be good to attend. In general - meeting with clients also helps the bonds to grow stronger.
Will let you guys know as soon as we know the dates. I hope most of the guys will be in Seattle then?