How big companies got their names

Here are a few:

• Adidas- from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
• Cadillac- Cadillac was named after the 18th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe , sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan. Cadillac is a small town in the South of France.
• Coca-Cola- Coca-Cola's name is derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' for the name to look better.
• Compaq- from "comp" for computer, and "pack" to denote a small integral object; or: Compatibility And Quality; or: from the company's first product, the very compact Compaq Portable.
• Daewoo- the company founder Kim Woo Chong called it Daewoo which means "Great Universe" in Korean.
• eBay- Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group.
• Google- the name is an intentional misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.
• Mazda Motor- from the company's first president, Jujiro Matsuda . In Japanese, no syllables are ever stressed and some inner syllables are virtually skipped. Thus, Matsuda is pronounced "Matsda". To make the name fly better outside of Japan, the spelling was changed to Mazda.
• McDonald's- from the name of the brothers Dick McDonald and Mac McDonald, who founded the first McDonald 's restaurant in 1940.
• Microsoft- coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.
• Nike- named for the Greek goddess of victory.
• Pepsi- Pepsi derives its name from (treatment of) dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment.
• Sharp- Japanese consumer electronics company named from its first product, an ever-sharp pencil.
• Sprint- from its parent company, Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal Communications.
• Verizon- A portmanteau of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon.
• Yahoo!- a "backronym" for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.

More

via