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List of company name etymologies
This is a list of company names with their name origins explained. Some origins are disputed.

''for similar etymological lists, see [[List of country name etymologies]], [[etymology]]

*[[Adobe Systems|Adobe]] - came from name of the river [[Adobe]] Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

*[[Apache HTTP ServerSoftware Foundation|Apache]] - It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server -- thus, the name Apache  .

*[[Apple Computer|Apple]] - favourite 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 Systems, Inc.|Cisco]] - its not an acronymn but its the short for San Fran'''cisco'''. 

*[[Compaq]] - using Comp, for computer, and paq to denote a small integral object. 

*[[Corel]] - from the founder's name Dr. [[Michael Cowpland]]. It stands for COwpland REsearch L'''CO'''wpland '''RE'''search '''L'''aboratory.

*[[Google]] - the name started as a jokey boast 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 grad 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 upper casing.

*[[Hewlett-Packard|HP]] - [[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 EL'''INT'''egrated '''EL'''ectronics.

*[[LG]] - combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

*[[  Lotus Development Corporation|Lotus]] - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The [[Lotus Position]]' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation oftechnique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

*[[Microsoft]] - coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

*[[Motorola]] - Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing [[radio]]s for [[car]]s. The popular radio company at the time was called [[Victrola]]. 

(contracted; show full)

*[[Santa Cruz Operation|SCO]] - from Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in [[Santa Cruz, California]].

*[[Sony]] - from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

*[[Sun Microsystems|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.

*[[Tesco]] - Founder Jack Cohen, who from 1919 sold groceries in the markets of the [[London East End]], acquired a large shipment of tea from [[T. E. Stockwell]] and made new labels by using the first three letters of the supplier's name and the first two letters of his surname forming the word "TESCO".

*[[Xerox]] - The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `[[dry]]' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying).  The Greek root `xer' means dry. 

*[[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. However, Yahoo! today has taken the expansion Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.

*[[3M]] - ''Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company'' started off by mining the material [[corundum]] used to make [[sandpaper]].