Have you ever noticed how many famous brand names do not directly describe the product or company? After all, why not? A name is not a brand. A name is merely shorthand nomenclature for the brand. Similarly for a logo. See article on how a brand is a promise of an experience.
Test your naming knowledge right here – and send us others you may know about.
Canada DryThe “Dry” in the brand’s name refers to not being sweet, as in a dry wine. When John J. McLaughlin, who first formulated “Canada Dry Pale Ginger Ale”, originally made his new soft drink, it was far less sweet than other ginger ales then available; as a result, he labelled it “dry”.
| Name | Origin |
| Starbucks | Not as abstract as many people think. In the classic book Moby Dick, Capt. Starbuck liked his coffee. |
| Max Factor | Named after their founder Maksymilian Faktorowicz who was born in Poland in 1877. |
| Kinkos | The founder’s nickname from school, because of his kinky red hair. |
| Motorola | From Motor and Vitrola – since they originally made car radios. |
| Xerox | An abbreviation of the word xerography – their underlying original technology. |
| eBay |
Official story now differs, but we still think it was from the strong East Bay connotations. For years their logo was even in the same colors as East Bay Transit Authority. |
| Volkswagen | Literally “the people’s car” – a term supposedly coined by Adolf Hitler. |
| Nike | Round about evolution from Phil Knight – the founder – as proposed by one of his employees. The name was drawn out of a hat full of other submissions. That particular employee apparently awoke in middle of the night and said it had to be Nike – Greek for Victory. Prior to that the company was called Blue Ribbon Sports. |
| Hitachi | The two characters used to write it mean “sun” + “stand.” By extension, it also could be translated “land of the rising sun.” |
| Nobel Prize | The famous peace and science prizes, named after Alfred E. Nobel – who invented dynamite! |
| A variation on the mathematical term googol – a very, very, very big number. | |
| Sony | Not a Japanese word at all. From the Latin sonnus for sound and the English word sonny – my little boy. Originally their product family name for transistor radios from Tokyo Electron Co until the child became more famous than the parent. |
| Fandango | Founder struggled and struggled to find a new name until deciding Fandango was the perfect name for fans to buy tickets to go to the movies. Problem was a pizza parlor in Monterey had the .com domain name – and an online ticket broker needs a matching domain. So founder drove to Monterey and gave them $100,000 for the domain (they simply switched to FandangoPizza.com and are still serving them up today). |
| Cisco | Named after San Francisco. Ever notice the logo is half a Golden Gate Bridge (cut lengthwise)? |
| Unisys | Back in the late ’70s Sperry Univac had already told their employees that the Uni- name space was getting very crowded and should be avoided in the future. Then in their merger with Burroughs they can’t find any good name and settle for the almost generic Unisys. Today they are a shell of their former great parents. |
| Apple | One day, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were working on the startup of their new little computer company, Jobs told his staff (apparently in some frustration), “If you don’t come up with a name by 5 o’clock I am calling it Apple“. And so it was until they launched their Mac line – as they had an agreement with Apple Records to never use the name for music. The legal case went to High Court in London where Apple lost and had to pay a $48 million fine – to keep their own name. They also lost the insurance lawsuit back in USA which cost another $8million or so. Can you afford $54 million to keep your own brand name? |
| Netscape | When Marc Andreesen founded Mosaic Systems he was adamant to keep this name. Unfortunately for him there had already been trademark fights over the name for software usage – right down the street in Silicon Valley no less. Luckily Jim Clark persuaded him to embrace their name of Netscape – a powerful product concept with a powerful name as history has shown. |
| Pentium | When Intel lost the legal battle to own the numbers 386, 486 etc because they had never properly claimed or used them, they switched to their new coined classical style of names. Penta of course is Greek for five. So the next in the series should be the Sexium chips! |
| Accenture | When Anderson Consulting split off from the parent, they had to find a new name. Despite the efforts of very expensive international branding agencies, this name was actually submitted by a Scandinavian employee. Did you notice the first three letters are ACC – like in Anderson Consulting Corp.? |
| Volvo | The name Volvo is not a Swedish name, but actually derived from the Latin “I roll” and was first coined and used by the famous SKF Ball Bearing company. A roll over name for a car famous for its safety! |
| Pringles | When the naming team could not find a name for these newly packaged potato chips they looked in the phone book in desperation. Mr. Pringle, or Pringle Street (or both) is where they landed. Today it is such a strong brand that the packaging never even uses the word potato chips. |
| Java | First the software was called Green, then Oak and finally in a stroke of genius by Kim Polese, while she was at Sun Microsystems, it became Java. |
| Internet Explorer |
When Microsoft picked this name they never did their homework. Eventually they settled for $4.8million dollars with SyNET who owned the name originally. Perhaps you should check your product name before launch! |
| Yahoo | From the dictionary (“a slightly crazy cowboy“), when founders were looking for Y names like YACC (Yet Another C Compiler) – a very inside story for Unix hackers. |
| BMW | Of course they are initials. But in this case for words that are almost unpronounceable in English – Bayerische Motoren Werke. |
| Oracle | Code name of their first big government project. |
| Mercedes Benz |
Named after the daughter of Benz’s first auto distributor in the south of Europe. |
| Big 5 Sporting Goods |
Professional and trophy hunters all dream of successfully hunting the biggest, meanest Big 5 animals of the world: Lion, Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo and Leopard. See them also celebrated in safari jewelry on sites like SafariGold.com. |
| Snapple | One of their original flavors: Spice N Apple. |
| Chevrolet | Ironically, one of America’s greatest car companies is named after a man born in Switzerland, who only had a short association with the car company and never lost his French accent. |
| Tiffany & Co. | This famous jewelry brand is not named after a lady, but rather Charles Tiffany, one of the founders. It used to be called Tiffany & Young. |
| L.A. Lakers |
While this name has great alliteration and looks like it was custom made, the real story is different. Originally the Lakers were from Minnesota aka The Land of Lakes. When they moved to L.A. the name fit just as well. |
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