12-Do you Know (Brand Names)
The three most valuable brand
names on Earth in the order - Marlboro, Coca Cola, and Budweiser
The founder of Marlborough died of lung cancer and so did the first "Marlborough man".
3M
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the material
corundum used to make sandpaper.
Adobe
This came from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of
founder John Warnock.
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 Jakarta (project from Apache): A project constituted by SUN and
Apache to create a web server handling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was the name
of the conference room at SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache
took place.
Apple Computers
It was the favorite fruit of the founder of Apple Steve Jobs. He was three months
late for filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company employees
of Apple Computers (founded in 1976) if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better
name by 5 o'clock that day. So at 5 o'clock nobody on that day nobody come up with
any better name, and he was eating APPLE at that time... so he gave the name of the
company 'Apple Computers'. [There are three apples - one apple seduced Adam and Eve,
the second apple awakened Isaac Newton, and the third apple was in the hands of Steve
Jobs. He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 on October 12, 2011.]
C
Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it 'New B'. He
later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the
Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie).
C++
Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then 'new C'.
Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was considered
insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti suggested the name C++
as a successor to C.
CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco.
Compaq
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer and PAQ to denote a small
integral object.
Corel
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for
COwpland REsearch Laboratory.
Google
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the
search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named "Googol", a
word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After its founders,
Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page, presented their project
to an angel investor; they received a check made out to "Google",so the
company was named "Google".
Hewlett Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they
founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
Hotmail
Hotmail's 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
programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to
as "HoTMaiL" with selective uppercasing.
Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but
that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an
acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.
Java
Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside
his window. The programming team had to look for a substitute as there was no
other language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions.
It came from the name of the coffee that the
programmers drank.
LEGO
The Lego Group began in the workshop
of Ole Kirk Christiansen (Apri l7, 1891 – March 11, 1958), a carpenter from Billund,
Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. LEGO's name was invented by combining
the first two letters of the Danish words "leg godt" which means "play
well" without knowing the fact that the same word in Latin language means "I
assemble". (see also Do You Know-8)
LG
Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Gold star.
Linux
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which here placed by
his Operating System. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought
the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax (free + freak + x).
His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be
easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called Linux on his FTP server, as
he did not like the name Freax. (Linus' parents named him after two-time Nobel
Prize winner Linus Pauling).
Lotus (Notes)
Mitch Kapoor got the name for his company from "The Lotus Position"
or "Padmaasan". Kapoor used to be a teacher of transcendental Meditation
of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Mercedes
This was actually financier's daughter's name.
Microsoft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer
SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.
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. Since
this rado was manufactured for cars or motors, it was named Motorola.
Mozilla
When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace Mosaic
(also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) .The
marketing guys didn't like the name however and it was re-christened Netscape
Navigator.
Red Hat
Company founder 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.
SAP
"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM
employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.
SCO (UNIX)
From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz.
Snickers
Originally introduced to the public in 1930 by Franklin and Ethel Mars, the
Snickers bar was named after their family horse. When that horse died they named
a candy bar after it. The original Snickers bars were sold for a nickel. Based
on studies, it is the best selling candy of all time with yearly worldwide sales
at $2 billion.
Sony
It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang
used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
SUN
Founded by four Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford
University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla
recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill
Joy to develop a UNIX-based Operating System for the computer.
UNIX
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing
System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, Ken Thompson and
Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS. They needed the
OS to run the game Space War which was compiled under MULTICS. It was called
UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was
later shortened to UNIX.
Velcro
"Velcro" is a portmanteau word
combining the French words "velour" and "crochet"
Xerox
The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say 'dry' (as it was
dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek
root 'xer' means dry.
Yahoo
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his 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 considered themselves yahoos.
Some More
Who invented Blue Jeans?
(1) Calvin KLein, (2) Joseph Wrangler, (3) Henry Lee, (4) Levi
Strauss, (5) Ralph Jordache
(4) Levi Strauss
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