Wondering how Wipro, Apple, Microsoft, Accenture got their iconic brand names? We reveal the fascinating stories.
According to Steve Jobs, Apple
was so named because Jobs was coming back from an apple farm, and he
was on a fruitarian diet. He thought the name was "fun, spirited and not
intimidating".
Wipro: From Western India
Palm Refined Oil Ltd Wipro Technologies. The company started as a
modest Vanaspati and laundry soap producer and is now also an IT
services giant.
Hotmail: Founder Jack
Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer
anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan
for the mail service he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and
finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "HTML" – the
markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as
HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.
Facebook: Name stems from the colloquial name of books given
to newly enrolled students at the start of the academic year by
university administrations in the US with the intention of helping
students to get to know each other better.
Twitter: Having rejected the name Twitch for their social
networking service, co-founder Jack Dorsey says: "we looked in the
dictionary for words around it and we came across the word 'twitter' and
it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of
inconsequential.
Accenture From "Accent on the future". The name Accenture
was proposed by a company employee in Norway as part of an internal name
finding process (BrandStorming). Before 1 January 2001, the company was
called Andersen Consulting.
According to the founder of Samsung
Group, the meaning of Samsung is "tristar" or "three stars". The word
"three" represents something "big, numerous and powerful"; the "stars"
mean eternity.
Adobe Systems: From the Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of co-founder John Warnock.
Google: An originally accidental misspelling of the word
googol and settled upon because google.com was unregistered. Googol was
proposed to reflect the company's mission to organize the immense amount
of information available online. (Googol is equivalent to ten raised to
the power of a hundred.)
Acer: Born as Multitech International in 1976, the company
changed its name to Acer in 1987. The Latin word for “sharp, acute, able
and facile”.
Skype: The original concept for the name was Sky-Peer-to-Peer, which morphed into Skyper, then Skype.
Dell: Named after its founder, Michael Dell. The company changed its name from Dell Computer in 2003.
Amazon.com: Founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company Amazon
(from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous
river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in
an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore. (Another story
goes that Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo,
which listed entries alphabetically.)
Infosys: Short form of ‘Information Systems’
Cisco : Short for San Francisco.
Lenovo Group: A portmanteau of "Le-" (from former name
Legend) and "novo", pseudo-Latin for "new". This Chinese company took
over IBM's PC division.
Microsoft : Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company
that was devoted to microcomputer software. Originally christened
Micro-Soft, the '-' disappeared on 3/2/1987 with the introduction of a
new corporate identity and logo.
Epson: Epson Seiko Corporation, the Japanese printer and
peripheral manufacturer, was named from "Son of Electronic Printer"
after a highly successful model, the EP-101.
Novell: Novell, Inc. was earlier Novell Data Systems
co-founded by George Canova. The name was suggested by George's wife who
mistakenly thought that "Novell" meant new in French. (Nouvelle is the
feminine form of the French adjective 'Nouveau'. Nouvelle as a noun in
French is 'news'.)
Compaq: From computer and "pack" to denote a small integral
object; or: Compatibility And Quality; or: from the company's first
product, the very compact Compaq Portable.
Mozilla Foundation From the name of the web browser that
preceded Netscape Navigator. When Marc Andreesen, co-founder of
Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was
internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) by Jamie Zawinski.
HP: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide
whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or
Packard-Hewlett.
Asus : Named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek
mythology. The first three letters of the word were dropped to get a
high position in alphabetical listings. An Asus company named Pegatron,
using the spare letters, was spun off in 2008.
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 did not.
HTC Corporation: A contraction of its original corporate name, High Tech Computer Corporation.
Groupon: Chief executive Andrew Mason used the derivation as
his five-word acceptance speech at the 2011 Webby Awards ceremony: "It's
short for group coupon."
IBM: Named by Tom (Thomas John) Watson Sr, an ex-employee of
National Cash Register (NCR Corporation). To one-up them in all
respects, he called his company International Business Machines.
Oracle : Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working
on a consulting project for the CIA. The code name for the project was
Oracle. The project was designed to use the newly written SQL database
language from IBM. The project was eventually terminated but they
decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. Later
they changed the name of the company, Relational Software Inc., to the
name of the product.
eBay: Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading
website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology
Group. "Echo Bay" did not refer to the town in Nevada, "It just sounded
cool", Omidyar reportedly said. Echo Bay Mines Limited, a gold mining
company, had already taken EchoBay.com, so Omidyar registered what (at
the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.
SAP: SystemAnalyse und Programmentwicklung (German for
"System analysis and program development"), a company formed by five
ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects'
group of IBM. Later, SAP was redefined to stand for Systeme,
Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung (Systems, Applications
and Products in Data Processing).
HCL: HCL is the short form of Hindustan Computers Ltd, Indian Software Company founded by Shiv Nadar.
Nero – Nero Burning ROM named after Nero burning Rome ("Rom" is the German spelling of "Rome").
The ever brazen Preity Zinta
might be known for bubbly roles on screen but, she has definitely
reached heights with her courage and humanitarian work. She works with
charities involved in creating awareness about female infanticide,
HIV/AIDS, Blood donation and human trafficking. On her 34th birthday she
adopted 34 girls in Rishikesh to provide them with education and a
better life.
