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[Sheflug] Geek-ology: Where Those Names Came From
Hi Guys,
Just wanted to add my congrats on the great Linux
at the movies talk - it was brilliant, many thanks to Richard
& Co for organizing it.
You'll know most of these, but I found a few I didn't...
Subject: Geek-ology: Where Those Names Came From
Adobe
This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind
the house of founder John Warnock.
Apple Computers
It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was
three months late in 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.
CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short
for San Francisco.
Compaq
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to
denote a small integral object.
Corel
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland.
It stands for COwpland Research Laboratory.
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'
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.
Hewlett Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide
whether the company they founded would be called
Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company
'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so
they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.
Lotus (Notes)
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or
'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation
of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Microsoft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to
MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the hyphen
was removed later on.
Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started
manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time
was called Victrola.
ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was
called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all
questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the
newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated
but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to
the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine.
Later they kept the same name for the company.
Sony
It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a
slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the
acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas
Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited
him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and
Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.
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.
--
***** Dr Jan White ***************************
* Molecular Biology, Sheffield University *
* Phone: +44 114 222 2741 FAX: 272 8697 *
***** E-Mail: Jan.White [at] sheffield.ac.uk *******
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