Interesting Origins of Company Names

There are a lot of intresting stories about the origin of company names. I would like to share some of the names in IT, since I believe we all are quite familiar with them.

Here they are!!!

Yahoo got its name from a word invented in Gulliver's Travels because the founders considered themselves yahoos.

Xerox comes from the Greek root xer meaning dry for dry copying.

Larry Ellison and Bob Miner, the founders of Oracle, got the name from a project code name they were working on for the CIA, which was to give the answers to all questions. Although the project did not finish, Larry and Bob saw the opportunity to take what they had started and market it.

Motorola, orginally called Victrola, was changed when radios started being manufactured for cars.

Microsoft comes from MICROcomputer SOFTware then changed to Micro-soft until the current name came into usage.

HP founders, Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to see whose surname would go first.

Apple got its name after Steve Jobs threatened employees that he would call his company Apple if they didn't come up with anything better.

Java was initially thought to call Oak, but as the name was already registered, they named it Java, the name Americans give familiarly to coffee.

Centrino is a blend of the words "center" and "neutrino". The name brings to mind scientific concepts that make this name sound very active and alive. The new name suggests a small, fast, powerful device.

IBM is an abbreviation for International Business Machines.

SUN is an acronym for Stanford University Network (or Networking).

Google came from the word 'Googol', which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nine-year-old nephew of U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner in 1938, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by one hundred zeros, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the Web. While registering for the domain name, one of the founders Sergey Brin mispelled it.

Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce wanted to name their new company "Moore Noyce". But the name sounds like "More Noise", which is not a good one for electronics obviously. They then used the name NM Electronics for almost a year, before deciding to call their company INTegrated ELectronics or "Intel" for short. However, Intel was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to buy the rights for that name from the chain.

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