Origin of Company Names

as seen on List of company name etymologies

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• 160over90 — named to reflect the marketing agency's goal of eliciting a human reaction with its campaigns: "160 over 90" is a state of heightened blood pressure.
• 20th Century Fox — film studio formed in 1935 following the merger of William Fox's Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures.
• 37Signals — named after founders watched a NOVA episode making reference to 37 unexplained signals found by the SETI Project that are possible signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
• 3Com — network technology producer, "Computer Communication Compatibility".
• 3M — from Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, which started off mining the material corundum used to make sandpaper.
• 7-Eleven — this chain of convenience stores started in 1927 as Tote'm (so called because customers "toted" away their purchases). In 1946, Tote'm became 7-Eleven to reflect the stores' new, extended hours — 7am until 11pm, seven days a week. (The store hours are now different around the world. For example, the 7-Eleven stores in Hong Kong, Canada and Norway operate 24 hours a day.)

A

• A&M Records — named after founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss
• Abloy — Acronym for "Aktiebolag Lås/Lukko Osakeyhtiö", meaning roughly "Lock Corporation" in both Swedish and Finnish.
• ABN AMRO — In the 1960s, the Nederlandse Handelmaatschappij (Dutch Trading Society; 1824) and the Twentsche Bank merged to form the Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN; General Bank of the Netherlands). In 1966, the Amsterdamsche Bank and the Rotterdamsche Bank merged to form the Amro Bank. In 1991, ABN and Amro Bank merged to form ABN AMRO.
• Accenture — Accent on the Future. Greater-than 'accent' over the logo's t points forward towards the future. The name Accenture was proposed by a company employee in Norway as part of an internal name finding process (BrandStorming). Prior to January 1, 2001 the company was called Andersen Consulting.
• Adecco — Formed from the merger of Swiss staffing company Adia with French staffing company Ecco.
• Adidas — from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
• Adobe — from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.
• Ahold — 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.
• Airam — Maria, the name of the founder's wife, backwards.
• Akai — Technically it means "red" in Japanese, but the Japanese also use it to refer to the color of the rising sun, as seen on the flag of Japan.
• Akamai — Hawaiian for "clever, intelligent and cool."
• AKZO — named from the 1969 merger of Algemene Kunstzijde Unie (AKU) and Koninklijke Zout Organon (KZO).
• Alcatel — from Société Alsacienne de Constructions Atomiques, de Télécomunications et d'Electronique.
• Alcoa — Aluminum Company of America.
• Aldi — portmanteau for Albrecht (name of the founders) and discount
• Alfa Romeo — The company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended.
• Allegra Print & Imaging — from All Electronic Graphics. The international printing franchise was formerly known as "American Speedy Printing Centers."
• Alstom — set up as Alsthom in 1928 by Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques and Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston, and changed the spelling to Alstom in 1997.
• AltaVista — Spanish for "high view".
• ALZA — from the name of the founder Alex Zaffaroni.
• 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. (Alternative: Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.)
• Ambev — American Beverage Company, the largest Brazilian beverage company and fourth in the world. In 2004 it merged with Interbrew to create Inbev
• AMD — Advanced Micro Devices
• AMOCO — AMerican Oil COmpany - now part of BP
• Amstrad — Amstrad Consumer Electronics plc was founded by Sir Alan Michael Sugar in the UK. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar TRADing.
• Apache — according to the project's 1997 FAQ: "The Apache group was formed around a number of people who provided patch files that had been written for NCSA httpd 1.3. The result after combining them was A PAtCHy server." [1]
• Apple — for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call the company Apple Computer if his colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 p.m. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time — which had names such as IBM, DEC, ADPAC, Cincom, Syncsort and Tesseract — in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different. Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle's Apple Corps to use the name 'Apple' and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name 'Macintosh' ('Mac').
• Arby's — the enunciation of the initials of its founders, the Raffel Brothers. The partners wanted to use the name "Big Tex," but were unsuccessful in negotiating with the Akron businessman who was already using the name. So, Forrest said, "We came up with Arby's, which stands for R.B., the initials of Raffel Brothers, although I guess customers might think the initials stand for roast beef."
• Arcelor — created in 2001 by a merger of Arbed (Luxembourg), Aceralia (Spain) and Usinor (France) with the ambition of becoming a major player in the steel industry.
• Areva — named from the region of Avila in northern Spain, location of the Arevalo abbey. Its name, minus one syllable, became AREVA.
• ARM Ltd — named after the microprocessor developed by small UK company Acorn as a successor to the 6502 used in its BBC Microcomputer. ARM originally stood for Acorn Risc Machine. When the company was spun off with backing from Apple and VTI, this was changed to Advanced Risc Machines.
• Arm & Hammer — the founder's name was Armand Maccabee. The word maccabee is a biblical hebrew name that translates to the English - hammer.
• Artis (zoo in Amsterdam) — from the Latin phrase, Natura Artis Magistra, or Nature is Art's Teacher
• ASDA — Associated Dairies, a large UK supermarket chain now a subsidiary of Wal-Mart
• ASICS — an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, which, translated from Latin, means "Healthy soul in a healthy body". Originally the citation is mens sana in corpore sano, but MSICS does not sound very good.
• Ask Jeeves — search engine formerly named after the gentleman's gentleman (valet, not butler) in P. G. Wodehouse's series of books. It was shortened to Ask in 2006.
• Aston Martin — from the "Aston Hill" races (near Aston Clinton) where the company was founded, and the surname of Lionel Martin, the company's founder.
• AT&T — the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation officially changed its name to AT&T in the 1990s.
• Atari — From the board game Go, "atari" is a Japanese word to describe a position where an opponent's stones are in danger of being captured. It is similar, though not identical, to "check" in chess. The original games company was American but wanted a Japanese-sounding name.
• ATS — Auto Technik Spezialerzeugnisse, German company producing light alloy wheels and motor parts with an own Formula 1 racing team in the late 70s and early 80s.
• Audi — Latin translation of the German name 'Horch'. The founder August Horch left the company after five years, but still wanted to manufacture cars. Since the original 'Horch' company was still there, he called his new company Audi, the Latin form of his last name. In English it is: "listen!".

B

• B&Q — from the initials of its founders, Richard Block and David Quayle
• Bang & Olufsen — from the names of its founders, Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, who met at a School of Engineering in Denmark.
• Bally — originally Lion Manufacturing, the company changed its name to Bally after the success of its first popular pinball machine, Ballyhoo.
• BASF — Initials of Badische Anilin und Soda Fabriken. Anilin and Soda were their first products. Badisch refers to the location in the state of Baden, Germany (Black forest region).
• Bauknecht — Founded as an electrotechnical workshop in 1919 by Gottlob Bauknecht.
• Bayer — Friedrich Bayer was the founder of the company and brought the company into the commercial register on 1, 1863.
• BBC — from British Broadcasting Corporation, originally British Broadcasting Company.
• BEA Systems — from the first initial of each of the company's three founders: Bill Coleman, Ed Scott and Alfred Chuang.
• BEGO — short form for Bremer Goldschlägerei. It should be BREGO, but was difficult to pronounce. BEGO is a manufacturer of dental goods.
• BenQ — Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to life
• Betty Crocker — A fictitious name.
• Bic — The pen company was named after one of the founders, Marcel Bich. Bich decided to drop the 'h' from Bich in order to avoid a potentially inappropriate English pronunciation of the name.
• Black & Decker — named after founders S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker.
• Blaupunkt — Blaupunkt ("Blue dot") was founded in 1923 under the name "Ideal". Its core business was the manufacturing of headphones. If the headphones came through quality tests, the company would give the headphones a blue dot. The headphones quickly became known as the blue dots or blaue Punkte. The quality symbol would become a trademark and the trademark would become the company name in 1938.
• BMW — abbreviation of Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Factories).
• Borealis — The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, is the celestial phenomenon that features bursts of light in colourful patterns dancing across the night skies of the north. Borealis, inspired from the shining brilliance of the Northern Lights, was formed in 1994 out of the merger between two northern oil companies, Norway's Statoil and Finland's Neste.
• BP — formerly British Petroleum, now "BP" (The slogan "Beyond Petroleum" has incorrectly been taken to refer to the company's new name following its rebranding effort in 2000).
• BRAC — abbreviation for Bangladesh Rural & Advancement Committee, world's largest NGO (non governmental organization). It works in development programs around the world.
• Bridgestone — named after founder Shojiro Ishibashi. The surname Ishibashi (石橋) means "stone bridge", or "bridge of stone".
• Bull — Compagnie des machines Bull was founded in Paris to exploit the patents for punched card machines taken out by a Norwegian engineer, Fredrik Rosing Bull.
• Bultaco — Catalan company of motorcycles, disappeared in the 80s. Its name is based on the name of its founder, Paco Bultó.

C

• C&A — named after the brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, who founded a textile company called C&A in the Netherlands in 1841.
• Cadillac — named after the 18th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan. Cadillac is a small town in the South of France.
• Canon — Originally (1933) Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory the new name (1935) derived from the name of the company's first camera, the Kwannon, in turn named after the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.
• Capco — Short for Capital Markets Company, founded by Rob Heyvaert (soon to appear in the Belgian version of The Apprentice). Capco is a global provider serving the financial services industry.
• Caprabo — Catalan supermarkets, founded by Carbó, Prats and Bonet.
• Carrefour — The first (and smallest) Carrefour store is located in Annecy near a crossroads (carrefour in French).
• Casio — from the name of its founder, Kashio Tadao, who had set up the company Kashio Seisakujo as a subcontractor factory.
• CGI — from the first letter of Information Management Consultant in French (Conseiller en Gestion et Informatique).
• Ciba Geigy — CIBA means Chemical Industry Basel, merged with a company named after its founder Johann Rudolf Geigy-Merian. It was renamed Novartis after a merger with Sandoz.
• Cincom — originally called United Computer Systems, which was similar to several other software and services companies of the day. Two of the three founders visited Philco (Philadelphia Company), and this inspired them to create a new company name derived from Cincinnati (where it was based) and Computer (its business).
• CINTIS — an (initialism) from Consulting, Information, Networking, Technology, Integration and Software (Business Solutions). Company incorporated in England & Wales in 2003 by Patrick David Hurd to support international companies moving into Europe, Middle East & Africa.
• Cisco — short for San Francisco. It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co": Computer Information Services was the department at Stanford University where the founders worked.
• Citroën — named after André-Gustave Citroën (1878-1935), a French entrepreneur of Dutch descent. He was the fifth and last child of the Dutch Jewish diamond merchant Levie Citroen and Mazra Kleinmann (of Warsaw, Poland). The Citroen family moved to Paris from Amsterdam in 1873 where the name changed to Citroën.
• COBRA — Computadores Brasileiros, "Brazilian Computers", electronics and services company, was the first state-owned designer and producer of computers in the 1970s, later acquired by the Banco do Brasil.
• Coca-Cola — Coca-Cola's name is derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' for the name to look better.
• Coleco — began as the Connecticut Leather Company.
• Colgate-Palmolive — formed from a merger of soap manufacturers Colgate & Company and Palmolive-Peet. Peet was dropped in 1953. Colgate was named after William Colgate, an English immigrant, who set up a starch, soap and candle business in New York City in 1806. Palmolive was named for the two oils (Palm and Olive) used in its manufacture.
• COLT — from City Of London Telecom
• Comcast - a contraction of the first syllable of "communication" and the last syllable of "broadcast".
• Compaq — from "comp" for 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.
• Comsat — an American digital telecommunications and satellite company, founded during the President Kennedy era to develop the technology. Contraction of Communications Satellites.
• Copersucar — Brazilian production cooperative in sugar and alcohol, its name is a contraction of Cooperativa de Açucar e Álcool.
• Corel — from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.
• Cosipa — Brazilian largest steel mill, located in Cubatão, the state of São Paulo. Its name is an abbreviation of Companhia Siderúrgica Paulista.
• Cray Research — supercomputer company named after its founder, Seymour Roger Cray, who was killed in a car crash in 1996.
• Cromemco, Inc. — early microcomputer company in Silicon Valley (circa 1975-198?) founded by two professors who once lived at Stanford's Crothers Memorial Hall.
• Cronos — Belgian e-business integrator, founded by Jef De Wit and named after Cronus (or Kronos), the father of Zeus and his siblings (in Greek religion and mythology).
• CVS — abbreviation of Consumer Value Stores.

D

• Daewoo — company founder Kim Woo Chong called it Daewoo which means "Great Universe" in Korean.
• Danone (Dannon in USA) — Isaac Clarassó in Barcelona made his first yoghourts with the nickname of his son Daniel
• Debian — project founder Ian Murdock named it after himself and his girlfriend, Debra.
• deEvia.com — named for Edgar de Evia noted photographer, artist and author
• DEKA — Manchester, NH R&D company responsible for Segway, iBOT, HomeChoice Dialysis and so on, named after founder Dean Kamen.
• Dell — named after its founder, Michael Dell. The company changed its name from Dell Computer in 2003.
• Denning & Fourcade, Inc. — interior designer company named after its founders Robert Denning and Vincent Fourcade in 1960.
• Denvia Reality, Inc. — real estate holding company named after its founders Robert Denning and Edgar de Evia
• DHL — named after its founders, Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn.
• DNC P&R — Delaware North Companies Parks and Resorts.
• Dow — named after its founder, Herbert Henry Dow.
• dreihundertzehn — German advertising agency, whose name is based on a running-gag, rounding up the resolution value of an image for best results in 60-point-raster in offset-print, normally 304,8 dpi or, rounded up, 310.
• DKNY — Donna Karan New York.

E

• EA Games — EA is from Electronic Arts. The company was founded in May 1982 as Amazin' Software and changed its name to Electronic Arts in October the same year.
• eBay — Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. "Echo Bay" didn't refer to the town in Nevada, the nature area close to Lake Mead, or to any real place. "It just sounded cool," Omidyar reportedly said. When he tried to register EchoBay.com, though, he found that Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, had gotten it first. So, Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.
• EgoBits — Software company in Guayaquil, Ecuador, derived its name by joining Ego concepts with bits and bytes
• Eletropaulo — One of the largest Brazilian companies in electricity generation and distribution, its name derives from Companhia de Eletricidade de São Paulo.
• EMBRAER — Brazilian aircraft manufacturer, its name is an abbreviation of Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica (Brazilian Aeronautics Enterprise).
• EMBRAPA — Brazilian state agricultural research and development company, its name is an abbreviation of Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária.
• EMBRATEL — an abbreviation of Empresa Brasileira de Telecomunicações. Brazil's largest telecommunications company, it was a state monopoly until 1992 when it was privatized and sold to MCI, then later resold to Telmex.
• EMC² Corporation — named from the initials of the founders, Richard Egan and Roger Marino. There has long been a rumor that another partner provided the third letter (C). Other reports indicate the C stands for Company. EMC adopted the EMC² notation to refer to Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2.
• Epson — Epson Seiko Corporation, the Japanese printer and peripheral manufacturer, was named from "Son of Electronic Printer"
• Esso — the enunciation of the initials S.O. in Standard Oil of New Jersey.
• Exxon — a name contrived by Esso (Standard Oil of New Jersey) in the early 70s to create a neutral but distinctive label for the company. Within days of announcement of the name, Exxon was being called the "double cross company" but this eventually subsided. (Esso is a trademark of ExxonMobil. Esso had to change its name for American purposes to Exxon because of restrictions dating to the 1911 Standard Oil antitrust decision.

F

• Fanta — was originally invented by Max Keith in Germany in 1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola syrup to Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors thought that imagination was needed to taste oranges from the strange mix.
• Fazer — named after its founder, Karl Fazer.
• Fegime — abbreviation for "Fédération Européenne des Grossistes Indépendants" (European Federation of Independent Electrical Wholesalers).
• Fiat — acronym of Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Factory of Cars of Turin)
• Fiatc — acronym of Federació Industrial de Autotransports de Catalunya (Federación Industrial de Autotransportes de Cataluña). FIATC originated in Barcelona (Catalonia/Spain) in April 1930, when the Union of Carriers was formed to share the risks derived from its activity.
• Finnair — from "Finland" and "air". Originally called "Aero Osakeyhtiö", which the international flight code "AY" comes from.
• Firestone — named after its founder, Harvey Firestone.
• Fluke — named after its founder, John Fluke, Sr.
• Ford Motor Company — named after its founder, Henry Ford, who introduced automobile mass production in 1913.
• Fuji — named after Mount Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan.

G

• Garmin — named after its founders, Gary Burrell and Dr. Min Kao.
• Glaxo — A dried milk company set up in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand, by Joseph Edward Nathan. The company wanted to use the name "Lacto" but it was similar to some already in use. Glaxo evolved and was registered on 27 October 1906.
• GlaxoSmithKline — 2000 merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham
• GLOCK — named after its founder, Gaston Glock.
• Google — the name is an intentional misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.
• Grundig — Founded in 1945 by radio dealer-turned-manufacturer Max Grundig.
• Gulfstream Aerospace — traces it origins to the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. In 1985 the company was sold and renamed Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation after the Gulf Stream current that runs just off the east coast.

H

• Häagen-Dazs — Contrary to common belief the name is not European; it is simply two made-up words meant to look European to American eyes. This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding.
• Haier — Chinese 海 "sea" and 尔 (a transliteration character; also means "you" in Literary Chinese)
• H&M — In 1947, a Swedish businessman named Erling Persson established Hennes, a ladies' clothing store, in Västerås, Sweden. "Hennes" is Swedish for "hers." In 1968, Persson acquired premises in Stockholm for his chain by buying the premises and inventory of a hunting equipment store named Mauritz Widforss. Included in the inventory was a collection of men's clothing, prompting Persson to expand into menswear. Accordingly, he renamed the company Hennes & Mauritz, which was later abbreviated to H&M.
• Haribo — From the name of the founder and the German home town of the company: HAns RIegel, BOnn
• Hasbro — Founded by Henry and Helal Hassenfeld, the Hassenfeld Brothers.
• HP — Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
• Hitachi — old place name, literally "sunrise"
• Hoechst — from the name of a district in Frankfurt
• Honda — from the name of its founder, Soichiro Honda
• Honeywell — from the name of Mark Honeywell founder of Honeywell Heating Specialty Co. It later merged with Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company and was finally called Honeywell Inc. in 1963.
• Hospira — The name, selected by the company’s employees, is derived from the words hospital, spirit, inspire and the Latin word spero, which means hope. It reflects the company’s primary market focus, its heritage as the core global hospital products business of Abbott, and expresses the hope and optimism that are critical in the healthcare industry.
• 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. (If you click on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you will still find "HoTMaiL" in the URL.)
• HSBC — The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
• Hyundai — connotes the sense of "the present age" or "modernity" in Korean.

I

• IBM — named by Tom Watson, an ex-employee of National Cash Register. To one-up them in all respects, he called his company International Business Machines.
• ICL — abbreviation for International Computers Ltd, once the UK's largest computer company but now a service arm of Fujitsu, of Japan.
• iCodsi Labs — it is a word which does not exist in any language, it sounds good and, of course, the .com and .biz domains were available.
• IDX, Inc — named from Internet Data Exchange. IDX is a term used to describe the use and transfer of data from the Multiple Listing Service, for use on a real estate Web site.
• IG Farben — Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG was so named because the constituent German companies produced dyestuffs among many other chemical compounds. The consortium is most known today for its central participation in the WWII Holocaust, as it made the Zyklon B gas used in the gas chambers.
• Iiyama — manufacturer of monitors and TVs named after the Japanese city, Iiyama.
• IKEA — founded by Ingvar Kamprad of Sweden. The name IKEA comes from a clever acronym using the initials of the founder, Ingvar Kamprad, who was from a family farm called Elmtaryd, which was near the village of Agunnaryd. The acronym is for a Swedish phrase but it turns out to be the same in English, Ingvar Kamprad's Economical Alternative.
• IKON — copier company name derived from I Know One Name.
• Imhotep Ltd — named after Imhotep (BC 2686–2613), the first engineer. He built the step pyramid at Saqqara.
• Inbev — The name was created after the merger of the Belgian company Interbrew with Brazilian Ambev
• Inditex — a Spanish group named from Industria de diseño textil.
• Infineon Technologies — derived from Infinity and Aeon. The name was given to Siemens's Semiconductor branch (called Siemens HL or Siemens SC/SSC) when it was spun off.
• Intel — Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore initially incorporated their company as N M Electronics. Someone suggested Moore Noyce Electronics but it sounded too close to "more noise" — not a good choice for an electronics company! Later, Integrated Electronics was proposed but it had been taken by somebody else so they used the initial syllables (INTegrated ELectronics). To avoid potential conflicts with other companies of similar names, Intel purchased the name rights for $15,000 from a company called Intelco. (Source: Intel 15 Years Corporate Anniversary Brochure)
• Interland — a web hosting provider formally known as Micron Computer, Inc. which was named either after Internet Land or the combination of the largest acqusition it performed, Interliant with the word Land.
• Itautec — a Brazilian computer manufacturer, its name comes from Itaú Tecnologia S/A. It is owned by the Banco Itaú private conglomerate. Itauna ("black stone") is a word in the Tupí-Guaraní languages of Amerindians which gives the name to the city of Itaú in the state of Minas Gerais.

J

• Jägermeister — German for Hunt Master.
• JAL — from Japan Airlines
• Jat Airways — founded in 1927 as "Aeroput" (Airway in Serbian). From 1947, it was known as JAT (Jugoslovenski Aero Transport). After the break-up of the former Yugoslavia (and after Federal Republic of Yugoslavia changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro), the company kept the name, Jat, but not as an abbrevation.
• JVC — from Japan Victor Company

K

• Kawasaki — from the name of its founder, Shozo Kawasaki
• Keller Williams Realty — Combintation of the names of the two founders, Gary Keller and Joe Williams.
• KFC — short for Kentucky Fried Chicken. It is popularly believed that the company adopted the abbreviated form of its name in 1991 to avoid the unhealthy connotations of the word 'fried'. In actuality, it is because the Commonwealth of Kentucky trademarked the name "Kentucky" in 1990. Anyone who used the word "Kentucky" for business reasons needed to pay licensing fees to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to KFC to avoid paying these fees. Recent commercials have tried to imply that the abbreviation stands for "Kitchen Fresh Chicken".
• Kia Motors — The name "Kia" (起亞) roughly translates as "Rising from Asia" in Chinese characters.
• Kinko's — from college nickname of founder, Paul Orfalea. He was called Kinko because he had curly red hair.
• Knallgrau — When two founders where talking on the phone about the company name, they missunderstood each other. One said "Knall" (which means "bang") the other one "Grau" (grey).
• Kodak — Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman. The letter "K" was a favourite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with "K". He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera.
• Konica — it was earlier known as Konishiroku Kogaku. Konishiroku in turn is the short for Konishiya Rokubeiten which was the first name of the company established by Rokusaburo Sugiura in the 1850s.
• Korg — Formed from the surnames of the founders, Tsutomu Katoh and Tadashi Osanai, combined with the letters "rg" from the word organ.
• Kroger — from the name of it's founder, Barney Kroger
• Kyocera — from Kyoto Ceramics, after Kyoto in Japan.

L

• Lada — from the name of a Slavic goddess.
• Lancôme — began in 1935, when its founder, Armand Petitjean, was exploring the ruins of a castle, Le Chateau de Lancôme (Loire-et-Cher) while vacationing in the French countryside. Petitjean's inspiration for the company's symbol, a rose, was the many wild roses growing around the castle.
• LEGO — combination of the Danish "leg godt", which means to "play well." Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but LEGO Group claims this is only a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish. Years before the little plastic brick was invented, LEGO manufactured wooden toys.
• Lexus — Toyota labeled the program to develop a luxury car for the United States as Luxury Export to the U.S. When it came time to choose a name for the car the company just shortened the working title.
• LG — combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar. (In Mexico publicists explained the name change to the public as an abbreviation to Línea Goldstar Spanish for Goldstar Line)
• LMW — Lakshmi Machine Works, India based manufacturer of the entire range of textile spinning machinery, and an engineering powerhouse.
• LoJack — "LoJack" (the stolen-vehicle recovery system) is a pun on the word "Hijack" (to steal a vehicle).
• Lominger Limited — combination of the two founders last names: Lombardo and Eichinger.
• Longines — In 1862 the new company "Ancienne Maison Auguste Agassiz, Ernest Francillon, Successeur" was born. At that time watchmaking in the area used the skills of people working outside the "comptoir d'établissage", often at home. In 1866 Ernest Francillon bought two plots of land on the right bank of the river Suze at the place called "Les Longines" and brought all of the watchmaking skills under one roof. This was the first "Longines factory".
• Lonsdale — Boxing equipment manufacturer named after the Lonsdale belt, a boxing trophy donated by the English Lord Lonsdale.
• L'Oréal — In 1907, Eugène Schueller, a young French chemist, developed an innovative hair-color formula. He called his improved hair dye Auréole.
• Lotus Software — Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
• Lucent Technologies — a spin-off from AT&T, it was named Lucent (meaning "luminous" or "glowing with light") because "light as a metaphor for visionary thinking reflected the company's operating and guiding business philosophy," according to the Landor Associates staff who chose the name. Source: Design Management Journal 8:1 (Winter 1997).
• Lycos — from Lycosidae, the family of wolf spiders.

M

• Macronimous — formed from the word "Magnanimous" — Macro gives the similar meaning as Big, Greathearted or Large and thus forms "Macro + nimous"
• MAN — abbreviation for Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg (Augsburg-Nuremberg Machine Company). The MAN company is a German engineering works and truck manufacturer.
• Mandriva — Mandrake Linux and Connectiva Linux merged to become a new company named Mandriva.
• Manugistics[2] — Manufacturing + Logistics, a leading supplier of Supply Chain Optimization software.
• Mars, Inc — named after Frank C. Mars and his wife, Ethel, who started making candy in 1911. Their son, Forrest E. Mars, joined with Bruce Murrie, the son of a Hershey executive, to form M&M Ltd (from Mars & Murrie). Forrest took over the family business after his father's death and merged the two companies in 1964. After retiring from Mars, Inc., in 1993, he founded Ethel M. Chocolates, named after his mother.
• Masco Corporation — from the names of the founder [[Alex Manoogian]], Screw and Company. Masco Screw Products Co. was founded in 1929
• Mattel — a portmanteau of the founders names Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler.
• Mazda Motor — from the company's first president, Jujiro Matsuda. In Japanese, no syllables are ever stressed and some inner syllables are virtually skipped. Thus, Matsuda is pronounced "Matsda". To make the name fly better outside of Japan the spelling was changed to Mazda. Its name is also derived from Ahura Mazda, the chief deity of the Zoroastrians.
• Mazda Eclairage — probably from the name of the Zoroastrian supreme being, Ahura Mazda.
• MBNA — originally a subsidiary of Maryland National Corporation, MBNA once stood for Maryland Bank, NA (NA itself standing for National Association, a federal designation representing the bank's charter).
• McDonald's — from the name of the brothers Dick McDonald and Mac McDonald, who founded the first McDonald's restaurant in 1940.
• MCI Communications — Microwave Communications, Inc. The company later merged with Worldcom to create MCI Worldcom. The MCI was dropped in 2000 and the acquiring company changed its name to MCI when it emerged from bankruptcy in 2003.
• Mercedes — This is the first name of the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who distributed cars of the early Daimler company around 1900.
• Merillat Industries — Named for Orville D. Merillat who founded the company in 1946.
• MFI — from Mullard Furniture Industries. The original company was named after the founder's wife, whose maiden name was Mullard.
• MGM — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed by the merger of three picture houses: Metro Picture Corporation, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Goldwyn Picture Corporation in turn was named after the last names of Samuel Goldfish and Edgar and Archibald Selwyn.
• Microlins — a professional educational franchise in Brazil, started as a computing school in the city of Lins. Its name is a combination of micro (from microcomputers) and the name of the city.
• Micron Technology — computer memory producer named after the microscopic parts of its products. The official name was Micron Computer, Inc. Since then the company has become Interland, a web hosting provider, after selling/spinning off its RAM division and closing down its computer division, licensing the name. The company is now headquartered in Atlanta.
• Microsoft — coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later.
• midPhase Services, Inc. — midPhase stands for Middle Phase, or middle of the road.
• Midway Games — derived from the name of an airport on the southwestern part of Chicago.
• Minolta — Minolta was founded in Osaka, Japan in 1928 as Nichi-Doku Shashinki Shōten (日独写真機商店; literally: Japan-Germany camera shop). It was not until 1934 that the name Minolta, meaning "ripening fields of rice" in Japanese, first appeared on a camera, the Minolta Vest.
• MIPS — originally stood for Microprocessor without Interlocking Pipeline Stages. When interlocks where added to a later implementation the name was redefined to not be an acronmym but just a name. (The name also connates computer speed, by association with the acroynm for millions of instructions per second.)
• Mitel — from Mike and Terry's Lawnmowers after the founders Michael Cowpland and Terry Matthews, and the company's original business plan.
• MITRE — Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Establishment
• Mitsubishi — The name Mitsubishi (三菱) has two parts: mitsu means three and hishi (changing to bishi in the middle of the word) means water chestnut, and from here rhombus, which is reflected in the company's logo. Mitsubishi means three diamonds in Japanese
• Mormaii — derived from Morongo, the founder's nickname, Maria, the founder's wife's name (at foundation time) and Hawaii.
• Motorola — Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company (at the time, Galvin Manufacturing Company) started manufacturing radios for cars. Many audio equipment makers of the era used the "ola" ending for their products, most famously the "Victrola" phonograph made by the Victor Talking Machine Company. The name was meant to convey the idea of "sound" and "motion". The name became so recognized that the company later adopted it as the company name
• Moxie Media — named after "an exceptional English short haired pointer that belonged to Walt Crory, one of Moxie's founders".
• Mozilla Foundation — from the name of the web-browser that preceded Netscape Navigator. When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) by Jamie Zawinski.
• MVC — the name of the UK entertainment chain stands for Music and Video Club.
• MRF — from Madras Rubber Factory, founded by K M Mammen Mappillai in 1946. He started with a toy-balloon manufacturing unit at Tiruvottiyur, Chennai (then called Madras). In 1952 he began manufacturing tread-rubber and, in 1961, tyres

N

• Nabisco — formerly The National Biscuit Company, changed in 1971 to Nabisco.
• NCR Corporation — from National Cash Register. When owned by AT&T the company's initials were (unofficially?) said to stand for AT&T's Network Computing Resource.
• Nero — Nero Burning ROM named after Nero burning Rome.
• Nestlé — named after its founder, Henri Nestlé, who was born in Germany under the name "Nestle", which is German (actually, Swabian diminutive) for "bird's nest". The company logo is a bird's nest with a mother bird and two chicks.
• Netsab — named from Network plus Sander, Andree and Bebo, who founded this Internet start-up in 2003.
• Netscape — Originally the product name of the company's web browser ("Mosaic Communications Netscape Web Navigator"). The company adopted the product name after the University of Illinois threatened to sue for trademark infringement over the use of the Mosaic name. Netscape then paid Landor $50,000 to design a logo.
• New Dragon — In Chinese mythology dragons represent celestial and terrestrial power, wisdom and strength. The company is named after this symbol.
• Nike — named for the Greek goddess of victory.
• Nikon — the original name was Nippon Kogaku, meaning "Japanese Optical".
• Nintendo — Nintendo is composed of three Japanese Kanji characters, Nin-ten-do. The first two can be translated to "Heaven blesses hard work"; do is a common ending for any store.
• Nissan — the company was earlier known by the name Nippon Sangyo which means "Japanese industry".
• Nokia — started as a wood-pulp mill, the company expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company later adopted the city's name.
• Nortel — The Nortel Networks name came from Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Bay Networks. The company was originally spun off from the Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd in 1895 as Northern Electric and Manufacturing and traded as Northern Electric from 1914 to 1976.
• Novartis — after the Latin expression "novae artes" which means something like "new skills".
• 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'.

O