Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, tells the story of how he came up with his iconic brand’s name:
“I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. This gave me some hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, a genie whispered ‘Rolex’ in my ear.”
Nike is the Greek goddess of victory.
When Larry Page was coming up with names for Google, one of the suggestions was “googolplex” which is one of the largest numbers. It was brought up in the brainstorming because Google was being formed to be one of the largest date websites.
‘Google’ then came about after one of the students helping with the brainstorming accidentally spelled it wrong.
The name Verizon came after the merger of two large communications companies, and it is a mix between the latin word “veritas” meaning “truth,” and horizon.
Reuben Mattus, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, wanted to pay tribute to Denmark when naming his ice cream company:
“The only country which saved the Jews during World War II was Denmark, so I put together a totally fictitious Danish name and had it registered. Häagen-Dazs doesn’t mean anything. [But] it would attract attention, especially with the umlaut.”
The founder of Venmo, Andrew Kortina describes how he got the name for the popular payment app from Latin:
“When we were brainstorming names, one of the roots we were exploring for inspiration was the Latin, vendo/vendere, ‘to sell.’ As soon as we said venmo, we liked it because it was short and made for a good verb: ‘Just Venmo me for dinner.'”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos originally wanted to name his company Cadabra but his lawyer thought it sounded too much like “Cadaver.” He then wanted to call it Relentless, and if you got to Relntless.com today it will redirect you to AMazon. He finally settled on Amazon after the world’s largest river.
Adidas is named after its founder, Adolf Dassler, who combined his nickname, Adi, and the first three letters of his last name to come up with the apparel company’s catchy name.
JCPenney is named after its founder which means that dude has a pretty cool name that rolls off the tongue.
The inventor of Pepsi, Caleb Davis Bradham, believed his drink helped with digestion so he named the drink “Pepsi-Cola,” which stems from the word dyspepsia, meaning indigestion.
Founder Ingvar Kamprad came up with IKEA by combining the initials of his first and last name with the first letters of the farm and village where grew up in Sweden, Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd.
The name for Gap is pretty simple. It refers to the generation gap between adults and kids
The story of Gatorade is pretty well publicized at this point. Scientists created the energy drink to help fuel University of Florida football players and named the drink after their mascot, the Gators
McDonald’s was founded by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, who named the company after themselves. Raymond Kroc eventually took over the company from them and bought the rights to the name.
Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank came upon the name in an encounter with his brother:
“I was a bit dejected, but I had lunch plans that afternoon with my oldest brother, Bill. So, I show up to pick him up, knock on the door, and he looks down at me the way only an older brother can look at a younger brother, and he asks, “How’s that company you’re working on, uhh … Under Armor?”