How Popular Tech Companies Got Their Names

Apple Computers

Apple is the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 O'clock. What a dumb colleague.

CISCO

It is not acronym as popularly believed. It is short term for San Francisco which located in USA.

Compaq

This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object. Yeah right. Compaq is not as small as it was named.

Corel

The name was derived from founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory. Why don't they just name it COW?

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 founders-Stanford graduate student Sergery Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google'

Hotmail

Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sbeer 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 letter "html"-the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

Hewlett Packard

Bill Hewlet and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded be called Hewlett Packard or Packard Hewlett.

Intel

Bob Noyce and Gordon Moorwanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but that was already a trademark by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus

Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

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 radio for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola. Never trust the hollywood. Night At The Museum 2 is full of lies. Except the Illuminati parts.

ORACLE

Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA. The code name for the projest was called oracle(the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to bring the project to the world.

Sony

It is originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN

Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network.

Yahoo!

The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels". It represent 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.