What are the most interesting stories about how different companies got their names?

There's a company called 37signals, which develops web applications. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Horowitz, a physicist who works with SETI, claims SETI has found 37 signals "which survived all our cuts" and cannot be positively identified. All 37 signals have been single events which have never been heard again. The software company was named after these signals. Another less well known software company, Palantir Technologies, gets its name from the seeing stones in Lord of the Rings: Sergey Brin's wife, Anne Wojcicki is the co-founder of a personal genomics and biotechnology company called 23andMe, named after the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. Finally, my pick for non-tech company with an interesting naming story is the Avedis Zildjian Company: If you've never heard of them, they are a a cymbal manufacturer founded in Istanbul by Armenian Avedis Zildjian in the 17th century during the Ottoman Empire. The first Zildjian cymbals were created in 1618 by Avedis Zildjian, an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemist who was looking for a way to turn base metal into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold; he created an alloy combining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver into a sheet of metal that could make musical sounds without shattering. Avedis was given the name of Zildjian (Zilciyân) by the Sultan Osman IIhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avedis_Zildjian_Company#cite_note-3 (from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_language word zil – cymbal, dji – maker-seller,ian – a common suffix used in Armenian last names which means 'son of') and began an industry in 1623, the details of whose main product remained secret for generations. It became family tradition that only the company's heirs would know the manufacturing process. Their name is practically synonymous with cymbal manufacturing; if you've ever seen a drum set in your life, the cymbal was most probably made by Zildjian. Needless to say, it is also one of the oldest companies in the world.

A mash-up of Mosaic-killer (Mosaic was the first web browser that had graphic display capability). The company name originates from the fact that Mena Trott and co-founder/husband Benjamin Trott were born six days apart. http://web.archive.org/web/19970415054031/www.apache.org/info.html

The name Asus originates from Pegasus the winged horse of Greek mythology. Only the last four letters of the word were used in order to give the name a high position in alphabetical listings

Google. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. The original founders were going for 'Googol', but ended up with 'Google' due to a spelling mistake on a check that investors wrote to the founders.

Google   The name started as a joke about the amount of information the search engine could search, or a googol of information. (A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.) When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin gave a presentation to an angel investor, they received a check made out to “Google.” Hotmail   Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith had the idea of checking their e-mail on a web interface, and tried to find a name that ended in “mail.” They finally settled on “hotmail” because it contained the letters html, referencing the HTML programming language used to help create the product.

Some interesting ones I found: Sony - It is derived from the Latin word sonus, which means “sound” and was chosen because the word “sony” is so easy to pronounce in most languages. 7 Eleven - In 1946 it changed its name from U-Tote’m to 7-11 after the new store hours of 7am to 11pm went into effect. Arby's - Although some people believe that the enunciation of Arby’s stands for “roast beef”. this isn’t true. It actually stands for the initials of its founders, the Raffel Brothers. Starbucks - Not many companies dive into the world of fiction literature to find inspiration for their brand but Starbucks is not just any company. It’s name comes from a character in the story of Moby Dick. Check out more here: http://list25.com/how-25-big-companies-got-their-names/ and here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/50-company-names-you-probably-didnt-know-the-orig

Apart from those already mentioned: ADOBE The name came from the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock 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. 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/Application s/Projects' group of IBM. 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. 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. 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.

Red Hat Fellow co-founder Marc Ewing owned a baseball cap like hat that he inherited from his grandfather (a red lacrosse hat).  When in university he used to name his software projects “red hat 1”, “red hat 2” and so on, just to differentiate his projects from his friend’s projects.   Later when he started the Linux project he abruptly named it as Red hat! In the first version of Linux that was the Halloween version Marc made a little request that anyone who happens to visit Philadelphia area and come across his grandfather’s red cap he (Marc) would be grateful if you returned it to him because it is the only bug to this very day that red hat has failed to track down!

Apple – It was named after Steve Jobs’ favorite fruit, apple, because no other founders had better idea for a name. Google – Originally the name was intended to be  ‘Googol’, which means a very large number (1 followed by 100 zeros). One  of the early investor misspelled it as “Google” on a cheque, and they  adopted that name. Corel – Derived from the founder’s name (Dr. Michael Cowpland): Cowpland Research Laboratory. Hotmail – One of the first browser based email  client. The founders used HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) while  creating the website, so they named it “HoTMaiL” (with uppercases),  later it was changed to “Hotmail”. CISCO – Shortening of San Francisco. Intel – Integrated Electronics. SUN – Acronym for Stanford University Network. Microsoft – Microcomputer Software. The original name was “Micro-Soft”, they later removed the “-“. Sony – From the latin word ‘sonus’, which translates to ‘sound’. Oracle – Codename for a CIA project which the founders participated in, later they adopted the name for the new company.