Company Names Etymology

Etymology is the study of words. I've summarized origin of some companies names that interest me, from an article in wikepedia. You could see the full list here.

• Electronics

- Sony : from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound
- Siemens : founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens
- Samsung: meaning three stars in Korean.
- Philips : named after the founders in 1891 by brothers Gerard and Anton Philips.
- LG : from two popular Korean brands, Lucky and Goldstar.
- Epson : named from "Son of Electronic Printer"
- BenQ : Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to life

• Food

- Pepsi :named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
- Nestlé : named after its founder, Henri Nestlé
- McDonald's : from the name of the brothers Dick McDonald and Mac McDonald
- KFC : short for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
- Coca-Cola :derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator - John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to make the name look better.

• Miscellaneous

- 7-Eleven : Formerly known as U-Tote’m. In 1946, U-Tote'm became 7-Eleven to reflect the stores' new, extended hours — 7am until 11pm, seven days a week. (But now most 7-Eleven operate 24 hours a day.)
- Wal-Mart : named after founder Sam Walton
- Johnson & Johnson : a partnership between brothers James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson, and Robert Wood Johnson.
- IKEA : A composite of the first letters in the Swedish founder Ingvar Kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
- HSBC : from Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
- FCUK : French Connection United Kingdom.
- ESPN : Entertainment and Sports Programmming Network
- DHL : named after its founders, Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn.

• Computer

- Yahoo! : a backronym for 'Y'et Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.
- Sun Microsystems : firstly designed at Stanford University, and chose the name Stanford University Network
- SAP : "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formerly "SystemAnalyse und Programmentwicklung" (German for "System analysis and program development")
- Red Hat : while at college, company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems and he was referred to as that guy in the red hat.
- Microsoft : coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to microcomputer software.
- Intel : InTegrated Electronics
- IBM : short for International Business Machine
- HP : Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
- Google : a deliberate misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.
- Apple - favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard.
- Apache - A PAtCHy server."