What’s In a Name?

Creativity is the essence of the tech world and it is evident even with the names of tech companies. There is a story behind the names of most of the companies. 

Here’s a look how some of these well-known tech giants got their names:

• Apple - Steve Jobs liked apples a lot. The other reason he named his company ‘Apple’ was that “Apple” was ahead of “Atari” in the phonebook and he used to work at Atari. 
• Amazon - Bezos wanted his book retail site to be so quick and easy that it seemed like magic. The site went online in 1995 with the name of Amazon, taken from the Amazon River for being the biggest river. Clearly, Bezos had big ambitions right from the start.
• Google - Google took its name from a deliberate misspelling of Googol, the word that represents 10^100, or a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Why this? Simply because founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page wanted to convey the huge amount of data they intended to make available.
• Microsoft - The company was officially established in April 1975, with the name coming from a combination of “microprocessor” and “software” – which is fitting given that they were creating software for the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems’s (MITS) Altair 8800.
• Oracle - This name started as the code for a project that co-founders Larry Ellison and Bob Oats worked on for the CIA. It was a database that was supposed to be able to answer any question about anything.
• Mozilla - In 1994, when a team at Netscape sat around to think of names for a new browser to take on NCSA’s Mosaic browser, what they were looking for was something that would crush the competition. What they looked to was Godzilla. Combining Mosaic with the movie monster brings you to the current day name of Mozilla.
• Asus – The name is derived from the mythological Greek winged horse Pegasus. According to the company’s own explanation it embodies the strength, purity, and adventurous spirit of this fantastic creature, and soars to new heights with each new product it creates.
• Lenovo - The word is a combination of Le and Novo, meaning new in Latin.
• Skype – It’s a combination of “sky” and “peer-to-peer”, shortened to skyper. The name ‘Skyper’ was already in use, so the new name became ‘Skype’.
• Twitter – Founders first thought of ‘twitch’. But ‘twitch’ was not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So, they looked up dictionary and found ‘twitter’. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.
• eBay - The website started out as “AuctionWeb,” a part of the personal website of former Apple software engineer Pierre Omidyar. The website took off, and Mr. Omidyar decided to spin it off into its own entity and name it after his consulting firm, Echo Bay Technology Group. When the domain name echobay.com was taken, he switched it to ebay.com.
• Verizon – According to Verizon’s corporate history, the name is a combination of the Latin words “veritas” and “horizon.” Veritas refers to truth and reliability, while horizon signifies forward-looking and visionary.
• Blackberry - This name was coined in 1999 because the keys on the device resembled the drupelets on the fruit.