Fanta - was originally invented by Max Keith in Germany in
1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola
syrup to Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts
of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German
word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors
thought that imagination was needed to taste oranges from the
strange mix. |
AltaVista - Spanish for "high view". |
LEGO - combination of the Danish "leg godt", which
means to "play well." Lego also means "I put
together" in Latin, but LEGO Group claims this is only
a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish.
Years before the little plasticbrick was invented, LEGO manufactured
wooden toys. |
Microsoft - coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that
was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened
Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on. |
Pepsi - Pepsi derives its name from (treatment of) dyspepsia,
an intestinal ailment. |
IBM - started by an ex employee of National Cash Register.
To one-up them in all respects he called his company International
Business Machines. |
Pixar - Action (verb) of making pixels in Spanish. According
to "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" book by Alan
Deutschman, Ed Catmull and John Lassetter were looking for
a sticky name and came up with "Pixer", but they
thought it sounded better in Spanish: Pixar. The company was
founded after Steve Jobs bought the computer graphics division
from Lucasfilm for $10 million.
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Pontiac - Pontiac or Obwandiyag (between 1712 and 1725 – 1769),
was a Native American Ottawa war leader, remembered for his
participation in a struggle against British occupation of the
Great Lakes region that bears his name: Pontiac's Rebellion. |
Starbucks - named after Starbuck, a character in Herman Melville's
whaling novel, Moby-Dick. |
BMW - abbreviation of Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor
Factories)
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