Great titles created by non-professionals
History shows that copywriting talent has not always contributed to the creation of a great brand. Sometimes the name comes from the founder's surname or place of residence.
One of the biggest challenges for people starting a new business is coming up with a name for their brainchild. Something with a deep meaning, relevant to the topic, easy to remember, and, of course, that would last for centuries.
History shows that the popularity of many brands is purely historical, and not due to ingenious naming.
Days and weeks are spent searching for the secret word, and obscene bills from branding agencies are paid.
But, as the history of the most successful brands that have lived and owned our minds for decades proves, the most talented copywriters and expensive agencies, as well as naming, branding and a host of other clever words, often have nothing to do with it.
Famous brands were named after places, names and surnames of founders, reflecting their views on the world, religious beliefs and even food preferences. Not to mention the simple influence of circumstances.
Adidas and Puma
Once upon a time there were two brothers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler. They had a family business - they made bedroom slippers. The soles were made of car tyres and the tops were made of decommissioned military uniforms. One came up with new models, the other sold the slippers. Then came training shoes, Czech shoes with booties. There were even skates. By the early forties of the last century, Dassler was the unrecognised standard of world sports footwear.
But after their father's death, the brothers fell out to pieces. They divided the property - two large shoe factories - exactly in half, and each went his own way. Adi Dasler began to produce Adidas shoes. Rudolf produced Ruda shoes, which later became Puma shoes.
This happened in the German town of Herzogenaurach, which was also divided into two parts by the brothers' quarrel. The workers of these factories went only to their own taverns, drank different beer, and their children attended different schools. The companies maintained their own football teams.
To this day, an employee of one company faces immediate dismissal if he or she is seen wearing shoes or clothes made by a competitor.
Lego
Ole Kirk Kritiansen, the company's founder, created the name by combining the Danish words for "play" and "good" (leg and godt). In Latin, "lego" means: "I read" or "I connect". Christiansen, a carpenter by profession, first made wooden toys, which eventually became so popular that other craftsmen had to be involved. The wooden cubes turned into plastic ones, and the idea of connecting and disconnecting them was brought from England by Christiansen's son. Easily pronounced even by a very young child, this name is remembered instantly and forever - no wonder adults often have a passion for the construction set. Lego is a word for play and company.
Auchan
Auchan - From the French name of the area where the company's founder Gerard Muller was born - hauts champs (literally, high fields), pronounced in French as Au Cham.
Initially registered in Russia as Oshan LLC, the company was re-registered due to the peculiarities of Russian linguistics (O is a non-accented, pronounced as A).
Adobe
Adobe Photoshop is installed on almost every second Russian computer. And the company is named after the Adobe Creek river that flowed behind the home of the company's founder, John Warnock.
Apple
Apple is the low-hanging fruit of the company's founder, Steve Jobs. After three months of trying in vain to find a name for his new business, he gave his partner an ultimatum: "I'm going to name the company Apple if you don't come up with a better one by 5 o'clock." Apples Macintosh is the name of an apple variety sold in the United States.
BMW
BMW is an abbreviation for Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, which means Bavarian Motor Works. The white and blue circular BMW emblem is still in use today - it is a stylised representation of a spinning aeroplane propeller and dates back to this period in the company's history. The design also refers to the checkered white and blue flag of Bavaria.
Canon
Canon - in honour of Kwanon, the Buddhist god of mercy. It was changed to Canon to avoid protests from religious organisations. In addition, the main customers at first were American soldiers, and the original name was too complicated for them.
Casio
Casio - in honour of the company's founder Kashio Tadao.
Cisco
Cisco is short for San Francisco. The logo depicts the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola - the main ingredients of Coca-Cola, when the drink was first discovered, were three parts of coca leaves (the same leaves were used to produce the drug cocaine) to one part of nuts from the tropical cola tree.
Daewoo
Daewoo - the founder of the company, Kim Woo Chong, named the company modestly, "The Big Universe", which is how it is translated from Korean.
Fuji
Fuji – The name was derived from the names of the founding companies - Furukawa and Siemens. The company was called FuSi and only later was renamed Fuji. There is also a legend that the name was given in honour of the highest mountain in Japan, Mount Fuji. Subsequently, its daughter Fuji Tsushinki (telecommunications) was renamed Fujitsu.
Google.
Google - the name comes from the word Googol (a number with 100 zeros).
Honda
Honda is the name of the founder of Soichiro Honda Honeywell.
HP (Hewlett-Packard)
HP (Hewlett-Packard) - founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard flipped a coin to decide whose name would be the first in the name. As you can imagine, Bill won.
IKEA
The name "IKEA" stands for "Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd", which is the name of the founder and the two villages where he lived.
Hyundai
Hyundai is Korean for "present" (time).
Kodak
Kodak - K was the favourite letter of George Eastman, the company's founder, and he was looking for words that started and ended with this letter. Moreover, in all alphabets, "K" is spelt the same way. In the end, Kodak was chosen because it is the sound a camera makes when it takes a picture.
LG
LG is the first letter of two Korean brands, Lucky and Goldstar, which have merged into one company.
Microsoft
Microsoft - MICROcomputer SOFTware. It was originally written as Micro-Soft. Then the dash was removed.
Mitsubishi
The name means "three diamonds", or "three diamonds", and the word "hishi" (when combined, the first syllable is pronounced according to the rules of Japanese phonetics and "hi" turns into "bi") means "chestnut". It is used to describe a diamond shape.
The Mitsubishi logo is the result of the merger of the Iwasaki family crest (three diamonds) and the Tosa clan (three oak leaves growing from a single point). Yataro Iwasaki came from a family that sold its nobility, and after the Meiji Restoration, he inherited the Tosa clan's shipbuilding business. Two generations later, Kayota Iwasaki repurposed the business and created the Mitsubishi Motors car company.
Since its inception, the Logo has remained virtually unchanged.
Motorola
Motorola founder Paul Galvin came up with the name when his company was starting to produce car radios. Many audio component manufacturers at the time ended in "ola".
Nike
Nike - Americans pronounce it "Nike", but admit that they pronounce it incorrectly if they are guided by the open syllable rule. In Russian, the correct pronunciation is also , not "Nike". In 1978, Blue Ribbon Sports was officially renamed Nike, Inc. It is believed that the name was taken from the name of the goddess of victory, Nike.
Siemens
Siemens is is based in 1847 Werner von Siemens (Werner von Siemens).
Nikon
Nikon, originally Nippon Kogaku, means "Japanese Optics".
Nissan
Nissan - formerly known as Nichon Sangio, which means "Japanese Industry".
Nokia
Nokia - started as a woodworking plant and grew to produce rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company was named after the area where Fredrik Idestam bought land for his second paper mill in 1868.
The Nokia estate has been known since the 1270s, although the first document mentioning it dates back to 1505. Today's Nokia is a town 15 km from Tampere. Another thing is that the name of the area itself is believed to come from the old Finnish word nois (plural nokia), which meant a black sable that once lived in those places. When the sable disappeared, the word came to mean any animal with black fur, such as a marten.
Hitachi
Hitachi means dawn in Japanese.
Intel
Intel - the founders Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to call the company Moore Noyce, but by that time there was already a hotel chain with that name. So they decided to stick with the acronym INTegrated ELectronics.
SONY
In the post-war period, Americans were understandably distrustful of everything Japanese, so it was decided to invent a word that would not be associated with Japan. After a lot of struggle, Sony was born from the Latin "Sonus" (sound).
Subaru
Subaru is the name of a constellation. It is also reflected in the company's logo.
"Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades cluster in the constellation Taurus. Six of the stars can be seen in the night sky with the naked eye, and about 250 more with a telescope. The kana characters used to write the word Subaru translate to "showing the way" or "bringing together". In Japan, this name is similar to Mitsuraboshi ("six stars").
Samsung
Samsung - Samsung means three stars in Korean, which was depicted on the company's first logo
Toshiba
Toshiba was formed in 1978 as a result of the abbreviation of the former name Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co., Ltd, which was obtained by the merger of Tokyo Denki, a household appliance company, and Shibaura Seisaku-sho, a heavy electrical equipment manufacturer.
Toyota
Toyota - after the name of the founder Sakichi Toyoda. It was later changed to the more auspicious Toyota. In Japanese, it consisted of 8 letters (a lucky number in Japan).
PEPSI
PEPSI was first produced in the 1890s in New Bern, North Carolina by pharmacist Caleb Bradham. On 28 August 1898, Brad's drink was renamed Pepsi-Cola. The Pepsi-Cola trademark was registered on 16 June 1903. According to one version, Caleb Bradham derived the name Pepsi from the word dyspepsia. According to another version, Caleb Bradham borrowed the name "Pep Kola" from one of his local competitors, slightly modified it and named his drink Pepsi-Cola.
"Pepsi-Cola is an anagram of the word "Episcopal". A large Episcopal cathedral was located opposite Bradham's pharmacy. The company itself denies this version.
A popular organisation in the Middle East claims that the word P-E-P-S-I is an acronym for "Pay Every Pence to Save Israel". According to this theory, the producer of the drink is actually a Zionist organisation that sends money to Israel.
According to another version, Caleb and his visitors simply liked the sound of the word, as it reflected the fact that the carbonated drink gave a certain vigour and energy (pep - vigour, energy, liveliness).
Philips
Philips - the company was named after its founder, Friedrich Philips and his son Gerard, who founded it in 1891 in Eindhoven to produce light bulbs. The company has not given up on bringing light to the people to this day, but has added a couple of hundred more items to its range.
Xerox
Xerox - comes from the Greek "Xer", which, contrary to popular belief, translates as "dry". The fact is that at the time the name was coined for the future copying giant (late 40s), only wet copying existed, and the author wanted to emphasise the use of dry dye powder in the technology. By the way, it does not sound like a "photocopier" at all - according to all the rules of the English language, this name reads like this: "zirox".
Yahoo
Yahoo was coined by Jonathan Swift in his book Gulliver's Travels. It was the name of a repulsive, disgusting person. The founders of Yahoo! Jerry Yang and David Filo chose this name because they called themselves Yahoo's. However, the name now stands for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.
Yandex
Yandex - the name is derived from Yet Another Indexer.
Rambler
Rambler - from the English Rambler.
