Talk:List of company name etymologies

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Contents


  • ECCO — Founder Karl Toosbuy liked simple company names, and by re-mixing the letters of Coke, he ended with Ecko - with the "k" replaced with a c for simplicity.

Can anyone verify this? I don't believe it. I have heard the same story about a different company, and cannot find a citation that confirms the derivation for a Danish shoe manufacurer Scholia (talk) 16:12, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the entry for Corel should be listed as a backcronym. I was at a talk to young students by Cowpland, and when asked how he came up with the name 'Corel' he said that it came up in a brainstorming session, when they were trying to figure out a name for the company that "meant nothing". Someone there mentioned the word 'Coral', and from that came 'Corel'.

You could be right but an article from Maclean's Magazine (in The Canadian Encyclopedia) supports the version we have. I've added a ref link... Scholia 23:53, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Eulogik: Watch out for spam inserted by Gautam Kishore, who is "CEO of Eulogik" (see http://www.linkedin.com/in/gautamkishore for details). I've now had to remove it twice Scholia 19:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

HCL — Hindustan Computers Ltd -- Looks spammy to me. Does anyone have a view? Scholia 19:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

If you are user 216.180.82.161, please could you stop introducing an error into the Starbucks entry. It's not helpful. Thanks! Scholia 00:07, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Is it OK to have the ethymology of products name in here or would someone consider a dedicated page? There is something incomple about Macintosh under Apple, but what about VAIO, Wii, Windows? --84.5.66.28 20:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

No, "company name etymologies" is not "product name etymologies"! Why not start a separate page? -- Scholia

Quote from the Ahold entry: "stands for Albert Heijn Holding. The holding was constructed around Albert Heijn supermarkets (founded in 1887). In 1987, Ahold became Royal Ahold. Albert, at the time, didn't catch on to the fact that the name sounded completely like "a-hole" and that this may be a problem."

Umm... This is not exactly encyclopedia material and is more like vandalism. If the author is adamant that the "a-hole" theory is true, then I want some citations to back this up. Mario, May 16, 2006.

Entries from this page have been quoted without attribution by Day2Day Activities: http://deliberately-different.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-they-named-companies.html

Archive.org supports the popular theory for Apache. The "Apache Indian Tribe" origin that appears on the site is revisionist history. http://web.archive.org/web/19970415054031/www.apache.org/info.html --> Page updated (althought someone keeps adding it back)

The information for 'Apache' contradicts the entry in 'computer program etymologies'. Does anyone know which one is correct?

Anyone seen the weird new discovery? Whazza? as if. Dave 24th July 05

I thought Yahoo was so named as an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle or was that a backronym?

Good point, you can add the expansion maybe with the words .. "Yahoo currently stands for Yet Another ... ". But as for the origin of the name, check out the history from the pages at yahoo.com (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html) Jay 00:26, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If you are 203.200.66.10, maybe you can give a link to the MGRM company you were talking about. (version 17:34, 7 Jan 2004 ) Jay 17:52, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If an entry has no other detail than the fact that it has been named after a person, we can remove such entries and provide a link to List of companies named after people. Jay 13:01, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you are 12.218.185.220, maybe you can provide a reference to Compaq being a portmanteu of "comp" (for COMPatability) and "aq" (for And Quality). Jay 10:33, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

According to various books, Apple may have been named for Steve Jobs's favorite fruit (as the article says), or for his stint at an apple orchard as mentioned on this page http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_14_2001.asp?pageid=666&co_pageid=3 and several others. In either case, it is not named for the Beatles' record label, or if it is, Wikipedia has scooped many journalists and historians. I'm updating the article to reflect this info. Besides, everyone knows Jobs prefers Bob Dylan to the Beatles ;).

Apache is *incorrectly* attributed to the cute name "patchy"? I've seen Brian Behlendorf speak, and he vouched for this entymology. He made no mention of being inspired by the Native Indian tribe of the same name. - 11pm 09 Aug 2004 EST

Just in case, somebody is interested: Der Spiegel, the largest German weekly news magazine, is running a series about company name etymologies this week on its online edition. They are quoting this article as their source. Simon A. 11:33, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Netscape then paid Landor $50,000 to design a remarkably ugly logo." Personally I've always kindof liked Netscape's logo. Was Landor actually briefed to create an ugly logo, or is that just the author's opinion? I honestly don't know -- maybe there's a funny story behind it. But it seems a bit out of place. Greyfedora 00:19, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The link in the entry "Sharp" leads to the musical symbol sharp. The correct linkt would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Corporation Sorry, but I have no idea, how I can fix internal links in Wikipedia. Maybe somebody can do this for me.

Thanks

Peter Häußermann

Fixed. If you want to see how it's done (and not make any changes), just click on the edit link. Afterwards, click the Cancel link or just abandon the edit. Isidore 12:04, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Given that Armand Hammer was born in 1898, and the Arm & Hammer logo was introduced in 1867 ([1] -- see timeline link), the notion that Arm & Hammer was named after Armand Hammer seems wildly unlikely. Bitt 17:03, 22 May 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Tesa

The bolding for the Tesa entry needs to be checked. Eric119 03:19, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Add MiG

I think the name MiG should be added. It stands for Mikoyan-Gurevich, but I don't know much more background than that.

[edit] pixar in spanish?

regarding the pixar entry:

"Pixar - Action (verb) of making pixels in Spanish. According to "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" book by Alan Deutschman, Ed Catmull and John Lassetter were looking for a sticky name and came up with "Pixer", but they thought it sounded better in Spanish: Pixar. The company was founded after Steve Jobs bought the computer graphics division from Lucasfilm for $10 million. (I'm sorry, but "Pixar" doesn't mean anything in Spanish - Maybe "Pixelar" but that is not a word either)."


can someone who speaks spanish resolve this and remove the comment at the end - either it does or it doesn't mean something in spanish (I don't speak spanish, so I don't know) but I think this looks bad on the page the way it is.

I have removed the parenthetical objection. Even if "pixar" is nonsense in Spanish, the article itself is no place to post this sort of objection. However, while I don't speak Spanish either, I have to admit that the assertion that "pixar" means "to make pixels" rings false. I will find someone who speaks Spanish and ask that individual to verify the truth of the statement. If it turns out that the original assertion is untrue, a better solution would be to correct the statement rather than simply log a parenthetical objection in the article itself. Even if "pixar" doesn't mean what this entry says it does, it is possible that Catmull and Lassetter chose it because they thought it sounded Spanish. —CKA3KA (Skazka) 20:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, Pixar is *not* an spanish word. Therefore, I just removed the line in the entry for Pixar. However, it is indeed possible that they thought it was spanish and used it, so if you are absolutely sure that is what happened, go ahead. By the way, there's no such verb in spanish with the meaning "to make pixels". "Pixelar" is spanglish for "pixelate", that is, when the resolution of an image is so low that the individual pixels can be distinguished. Charles Dexter Ward 01:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, Charles, for clearing that up. After the flawed text was removed, all that was left was, "The company was founded after Steve Jobs bought the computer graphics division from Lucasfilm for $10 million." Since that doesn't tell us anything about the etymology of the name "Pixar," I removed the entry entirely. No information is better than faulty information. However, I have a feeling that the truth was in the original text in some form, it was just misphrased to the point that it wasn't possible to work it out without having read the book. Hopefully, someone who has read the book, possibly the original author of the entry, will be able to rewrite the entry in a clearer form. —CKA3KA (Skazka) 05:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I can say with a 100% confidence level that Pixar does not have any meaning in either Castellano Spanish or the more widespread Latin Spanish. However, i have not read the aforementioned book. Dragonlord kfb 00:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Here is an interesting link indicating that it's not actually Spanish, but it was intended to "sound like Spanish", or "Pseudo-Spanish": "I (with some help from my colleagues Loren Carpenter and Rodney Stock) created the name Pixar for my previous company as a pseudo-Spanish verblike noun meaning "to make pictures" (the infinitive in Spanish ends in -ar, -er, or -ir)." Nczempin 16:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Remove red-link companíes?

If a company does not have a main entry, but is listed here (and thus has a red link), it smells of spam to me. Nczempin 21:48, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

One exception seems to be companies that have since merged with others, such as Bauknecht, or renamed, such as Ciba-Geigy. Nczempin 16:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Baritchi Group is a rather long entry and appears to be an advertisement.Dav2008 21:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Not necessarily spam: Wikipedia is a very long way from covering all significant companies, even in the computer industry. Also, a significant part of the page's appeal is that the name derivations are of interest, even if the companies are not. Scholia 12:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with this assessment. There would be no way to guard against spam-like entries. How would you decide whether the entry of a particular company name is "of interest"? There's no objective way IMHO, and therefore I find it better to have the "blue link" as an entry hurdle. If the name derivation is really that interesting because it's so incredibly original or whatever, then the company would IMHO deserve its own page. Nczempin 16:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

And I disagree with your disagreement, on the grounds that it is (a) unnecessary -- the page is not awash with spam; (b) unnecessarily restrictive, and (c) illogical ;-) The fact that a company might well deserve its own page doesn't mean it has one, or is likely to get one in the near future. There are times when the application of a simplistic and authoritarian "iron rule" is not a substitute for applying common sense. Scholia 00:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

While the page is/was not awash with spam, it does creep in. I personally believe the company names that I removed today, are examples of that. This world has hundreds of thousands of companies, literally, and almost every one of them has a name that has some background. Of course, if it's the consequence of a renamed or merged company that we do have an article for, that'd be fine, but that would also be easily established. Perhaps we don't cover every significant company yet, but in that case an actual stub should easily survive (and grow!) and could be created prior to adding this list. --JoanneB 13:01, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Did you actually research any of the ones you removed? Did you think of creating stubs for any of them yourself, or do you just casually hand out advice you don't follow? At this point I haven't actually looked to see what's happened, but I'm hoping that it's not simply another example of the draconian application of institutional stupidity ;-) Scholia 21:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Armand Maccabee?

The idea that the Arm & Hammer came from the name Armand Maccabee sounds a bit fishy, since the company was founded by Church and Dwight. Is there any documentation for the Armand Maccabee story? --75.66.123.173 21:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I have replaced the Maccabbe story with the etymology from the book Twinkie Deconstructed. --Beirne 21:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

128.143.10.42 20:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC) Referring to the entry for LEGO: In Charlottesville Virginia, I live on Lego Drive, named after after Thomas Jefferson's Monticello "quarter farm" in which it runs. So clearly the origins of the word Lego very much predate the Dutch naming of the toy. Further, given Jefferson's passions, I would have guessed the word had Italian (or perhaps French) origins not Dutch. Anyone know? - John B, Charlottesville VA

[edit] More to add

When someone has the time and interest, please add these (found in Category:Companies without an unabbreviated name which is up for deletion):

Feel free to delete them from this list once they have been added to the article. - Fayenatic (talk) 21:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)