Apple Computers: Steve Jobs, the founder, chose the name as he was fond of the fruit. When he failed to find a better name, he settled on “Apple Computers” after threatening his colleagues with the choice if they couldn’t come up with an alternative by 5 pm.
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Adobe: Founder John Warnock’s house was situated near the Adobe Creek river, which inspired the name for the company.
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Google: Originally named ‘Googol,’ the search engine’s name represented the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, presented their idea to an investor who mistakenly wrote a check to “Google,” and the name stuck.
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Sony: The name is derived from the Latin word “sonus,” meaning sound, and “sonny,” a slang term used to describe a bright youngster.
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Yahoo!: Inspired by Jonathan Swift’s book “Gulliver’s Travels,” the founders, Jerry yang and Davis Filo, chose the name because they saw themselves as “yahoos.”
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Motorola: The name was inspired by the popular radio company at the time, Victrola, when founder Paul Galvin started manufacturing radios for cars.
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Xerox: Derived from the Greek word “xer,” meaning dry, inventor Chester Carlson shoes the name for his dry copying product.
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Sun Microsystems: Founded by four Stanford University friends, the name stands for “Stanford University Network.”
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Microsoft: The name was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company’s focus on MICROcomputer SOFTware. It was initially “Micro-Soft,” but the hyphen was later dropped.
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Intel: Originally, founders Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name the company “Moore Noyce,” but the name was already trademarked by a hotel chain. They settled on an acronym of “INTegrated ELectronics” instead.
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Hewlett-Packard: The company’s name was decided by a coin toss between founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who decided it would be either “Hewlett-Packard” or “Packard-Hewlett.”
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Oracle: While working on a CIA project, founders Larry Ellison and Bob Oats name their company “Oracle,” which represented the system to give answers to all questions.
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Cisco: The name is an abbreviation of “San Francisco,” the city where the company was founded. The logo of the company reflects its San Francisco heritage, with a stylized Golden Gate Bridge.
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Hotmail: Founder Jack Smith named the email service “Hotmail” as it included the letters “html,” the programming language used to write web pages. The name was initially stylized as “HoTMaiL” with selective upper casings.
