How Famous Companies Got Their Names?

Nike: Named for the greek goddess of victory. The swoosh symbolises her flight.

Skype: The original concept was ‘Sky-Peer-to-Peer’, which morphed into Skyper, then Skype. 

Mercedes: This was actually financier's daughter's name.

Adidas: The company name was taken from its founder Adolf (ADI) Dassler whose first name was shortened to the nickname Adi. Together with first three letters of his surname it formed ADIDAS. 

Apple Computers: It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late for 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.

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'. So, instead of returning the cheque for correction, they decided to change the name 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.

Microsoft: Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Sony: It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound and 'sonny' as lang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
LG: Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

SAP: "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.

Xerox: The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say 'dry' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root 'xer' means dry.

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.