Why they are named so ...

BY CRUZ, Jennifer R.

Xerox

The Greek root "xer" means dry. The inventor, Chestor
Carlson, named his product Xerox as it was dry
copying, markedly different from the then prevailing
wet copying.


Sun Microsystems

Founded by four Stanford University buddies, Sun is
the acronym for Stanford University Network.


Sony

From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny'
a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright
youngster.


SAP

"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing",
formed by four ex-IBM employees who used to work in
the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.


Red Hat

Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell
lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while
at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to
search for it desperately. The manual of the beta
version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to
return his Red Hat if found by anyone!


Oracle

Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a
consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). 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).


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.


Microsoft

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


Lotus

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.


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.


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.


Hotmail

Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email 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 casings.


Google

The name started as a jockey 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 graduate students Sergey Brin and
Larry Page presented their project to an angel
investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google


Cisco

The name is not an acronym but an abbreviation of San
Francisco. The company's logo reflects its San
Francisco name heritage. It represents a stylized
Golden Gate Bridge.


Apple Computers

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.


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.