Adobe Systems
Apple Computers
++It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 O'clock.
++Named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The first three letters of the word were dropped to get a high position in alphabetical listings. An Asus company named Pegatron, using the spare letters, was spun off in 2008.
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.
++Computer Associates was founded in 1976 as Computer Associates International, Inc. by Charles Wang
Corel
++The name was derived from the founder's name Dr.Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.
++ 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.
++Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. "Echo Bay" did not refer to the town in Nevada, "It just sounded cool", Omidyar reportedly said. Echo Bay Mines Limited, a gold mining company, had already taken EchoBay.com, so Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.
++Name stems from the colloquial name of books given to newly enrolled students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better.
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 students Sergey 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 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.
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.
++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.
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.
++Named by Tom (Thomas John) Watson Sr, an ex-employee of National Cash Register (NCR Corporation). To one-up them in all respects, he called his company International Business Machines.
++Abbreviation for International Computers Limited, once the UK's largest computer company but now a service arm of Fujitsu, of Japan.
Lotus (Notes)
++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.
++From the combination of two popular Korean brands, Lucky and Goldstar. (In Mexico, publicists explained the name change as an abbreviation to Linea Goldstar, Spanish for Goldstar Line)
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.
ORACLE
++Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.
++From the phrase "poetry in motion", which company founder Mike Lazaridis had seen used to describe a football player.
++Service Games of Japan was founded by Marty Bromley (an American) to import pinball games to Japan for use on American military bases.
++The original concept for the name was Sky-Peer-to-Peer, which morphed into Skyper, then Skype.
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 4 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 OS for the computer.
++Having rejected the name Twitch for their social networking service, co-founder Jack Dorsey says: "we looked in the dictionary for words around it and we came across the word 'twitter' and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information', and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was."
++Named from a Zulu word (ùɓúntú) that translates as "humanity to others".
++From Voice, Data, Telefone. Vodafone made the UK's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on 1 January 1985.
++From Western India Palm Refined Oil Ltd Wipro Technologies. The company started as a modest Vanaspati and laundry soap producer and is now also an IT services giant.
++Named from xerography, a word derived from the Greek xeros (dry) and graphos (writing). The company was founded as The Haloid Company in 1906, launched its first XeroX copier in 1949, and changed its name to Haloid Xerox in 1958.
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
