The Musings of Ruth

Main Entry: muse
Function: verb
Pronunciation: 'myüz
Form(s): mused ; mus·ing
1 : to become absorbed in thought ; especially : to turn something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively
2 : to think or say reflectively synonym : PONDER

Friday, February 16, 2007

Where did they get that name?

I completely bombed on a little quiz I found online thru AOL this morning about guessing the origins of famous company names. It was quite interesting, so I figured I'd share some of them with you...

VW - it's the German meaning for people's car. Founder Ferdinand Porsche wanted to produce a car that was affordable for the masses.

Wendy's - Wendy was the nickname of founder Dave Thomas' daughter Melinda.

Starbucks - The first mate of the tyrannical captain Ahab in "Moby Dick" was Starbuck.

Virgin - Founder Richard Branson's and his friends chose the name "Virgin Records" as they were all virgins when it came to business.

Haagen-Dazs - It's simply two made-up words meant to look European to American eyes.
(That one is too funny!)

Google - a deliberate misspelling of the word googol. Meaning "1 followed by 100 zeroes," googol's intentional misspelling reflects the mission to organize the immense information online.

Reebok - named after one of the fastest land animals on Earth, the African Antelope.
Sidenote: I did a little more searching on this, and according to the wiki... "The name is the Afrikaans / Dutch spelling of the word rhebok, a type of African antelope or gazelle." (And the company's been around since 1895!)

eBay - the original domain name was taken. Founder Pierre Omidyar had a web consulting biz called Echo Bay Technology Group but EchoBay.com was taken.

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