This is a list of company names with their name origins explained. Some origins are disputed.
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- 20th Century Fox – Film studio; formed in 1935 through the merger of William Fox's Fox Film, and Twentieth Century Pictures.
- 23andme – Using the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up each person's genome, the company helps individuals make sense of their own ( me ) genome.
- 37signals – Web development company; named for the 37 radiotelescope signals identified by astronomer Paul Horowitz as potential messages from extraterrestrial intelligence.
- 3Com – Network technology producer; the three com s are com puter , com munication , and com patibility .
- 3M – from the company's original name, M innesota M ining and M anufacturing Company.
- 7-Eleven – Convenience stores; renamed from "U-Tote'm" in 1946 to reflect their newly extended hours, 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m.
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- A&M Records – named after founders Herb A lpert and Jerry M oss
- A&P – from A tlantic & P acific in Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, a U.S.-based supermarket chain.
- A&W Root Beer – named after founders Roy A llen and Frank W right
- ABN AMRO – in the 1960s, the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Dutch Trading Society; 1824) and De Twentsche Bank merged to form the Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN; General Bank of the Netherlands); in 1966, the Amsterdamsche Bank and the Rotterdamsche Bank merged to form the Amro Bank; in 1991, ABN and Amro Bank merged to form ABN AMRO.
- Accenture – from " Accent on the fut ure ". The name Accenture was proposed by a company employee in Norway as part of an internal name finding process ( BrandStorming ). Before January 1, 2001, the company was called Andersen Consulting.
- Acer – Born as Multitech International in 1976, the company changed its name to Acer in 1987. The latin word for “sharp, acute, able and facile”
- Adecco – named from the merger of Swiss staffing company Ad ia with French staffing company Ecco .
- Adidas – from the name of the founder Adolf ( Adi ) Das sler.
- Adobe Systems – from the Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of co-founder John Warnock.
- Ahold – a hold ing company of A lbert H eijn and other supermarkets. For its 100th anniversary in 1987, Ahold was granted the title of Koninklijke ("Royal" in Dutch) by the Monarchy of the Netherlands, changing its name to Koninklijke Ahold (Royal Ahold).
- Akai – named for its founder, Masukichi Akai .
- Akamai – from the Hawaiian word akamai meaning smart or clever; the company defines it as "intelligent, clever and cool".
- AKZO – named from the 1969 merger of Algemene Kunstzijde Unie ( AK U) and Koninklijke Zout Organon (K ZO ).
- AKG Acoustics – from the company’s original name, A kustische und K ino- G eräte (Acoustic and Cinema Equipment)
- Alcatel-Lucent – Alcatel was named from Société Al sacienne de C onstructions A tomiques, de Tél écomunications et d'Electronique. It took over Lucent Technologies in 2006.
- Alcoa – Al uminum Co mpany of A merica.
- Aldi – portmanteau for Al brecht (name of the founders) and di scount
- Alfa Romeo – the company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for A nonima L ombarda F abbrica A utomobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended.
- Alstom – set up as Alsthom in 1928 by Société Als acienne de Constructions Mécaniques and Compagnie Française Thom son-Houston, it changed the spelling to Alstom in 1997.
- AltaVista – Spanish for "high view".
- ALZA – from the name of the founder Al ex Za ffaroni.
- Amazon.com – founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore. (Alternative: Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.)
- AmBev – Am erican Bev erage Company, the largest Brazilian beverage company and fourth in the world. In 2004 it merged with Interbrew to create Inbev, which in turn purchased Anheuser-Busch in 2008 to form Anheuser-Busch InBev.
- AMC Theatres – A merican M ulti- C inema: the company pioneered multi-screen cinemas.
- AMD – A dvanced M icro D evices
- AMKOR – AM erican KOR ea
- Amiga Corporation - The original developers of the 16-bit Amiga computer chose the name, which means a 'female friend' in Spanish and Portuguese, because it sounded friendly, and because it came before rivals (Apple Inc. and Atari) alphabetically.
- Amoco – AM erican O il CO mpany – now part of BP
- Amstrad – Amstrad Consumer Electronics plc was founded by Sir Alan Michael Sugar in the UK. The name is a contraction of A lan M ichael S ugar Trad ing.
- Anheuser-Busch InBev – Formed by the 2008 purchase of Anheuser-Busch by InBev. Anheuser-Busch was named for the company's original founder, Eberhard Anheuser, and his later partner Adolphus Busch.
- AOL – from A merica O n l ine. The company was founded in 1983 as Quantum Computer Services.
- Apache – according to the project's 1997 FAQ: "The Apache group was formed around a number of people who provided patch files that had been written for NCSA httpd 1.3. The result after combining them was A PAtCHy server."
- Apple – For the favorite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard, and to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time – which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract
- Apricot Computers – early UK-based microcomputer company founded by ACT (Applied Computer Techniques), a business software and services supplier. The company wanted a "fruity" name (Apple and Acorn were popular brands) that included the letters A, C and T. A pri c o t fit the bill.
- Arby's – the enunciation of the initials of its founders, the R affel B rothers. The partners wanted to use the name Big Tex, but were unsuccessful in negotiating with the Akron businessman who was already using the name. So, Forrest said, "We came up with Arby's, which stands for R.B., the initials of Raffel Brothers, although I guess customers might think the initials stand for roast beef."
- Arcelor – created in 2001 by a merger of Arbed (Luxembourg), Aceralia (Spain) and Usinor (France) with the ambition of becoming a major player in the steel industry.
- AREVA – named from the region of Ávila in northern Spain, location of the Arevalo abbey. Arevalo was shorted to AREVA.
- Aricent – communications software company name created in 2006 by combining two words "arise" and "ascent".
- ARM Limited – named after the microprocessor developed by small UK company Acorn as a successor to the 6502 used in its BBC Microcomputer. ARM originally stood for A corn R isc M achine. When the company was spun off with backing from Apple and VTI, this was changed to Advanced Risc Machines.
- Arm & Hammer – based on the arm and hammer of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metalworking. It was previously the logo of the Vulcan Spice Mills in Brooklyn. When James Church, the son of Church & Dwight founder Austin Church, came to Church and Dwight from Vulcan Spice Mills, he brought the logo with him.
- ARP – company that made analog synthesizers in the 1970s, named after founder A lan R obert P earlman.
- Artis (zoo in Amsterdam) – from the Latin phrase, Natura Artis Magistra , or Nature is Art's Teacher
- Asda – Asda Stores Limited was founded as Associated Dairies & Farm Stores Ltd in 1949. However the formation of the Asda name occurred in 1965 with the merger of the Asquith chain of three supermarkets and Associated Dairies; Asda is an abbreviation of As quith and Da iries, a large UK supermarket chain that is now a subsidiary of Wal-Mart.
- ASICS – an acronym for A nima S ana I n C orpore S ano, which, translated from Latin, means "Hea
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