Origins of Company Names

• Amazon.com - Founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company to 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 bookstore as opposed to the then prevalent bookstores. (Alternative: It is said that Jeff Bezos named his book store Amazon simply to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo at the time. Yahoo listed entries alphabetically, and thus Amazon would always appear above its competitors in the relevant categories it was listed in.)
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  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
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  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.
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  eBay - Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. " Echo Bay " didn't refer to the town in Nevada , the nature area close to Lake Mead , or any real place. "It just sounded cool," Omidyar reportedly said. When he tried to register EchoBay.com, though, he found that Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, had gotten it first. So, Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.
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  B&Q - from the initials of its founders, Block and Quayle
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  Google - the name is a misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.
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  Häagen-Dazs - Contrary to common belief, the name is not European; it is simply two made-up words meant to look European to American eyes. This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding.
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  IKEA - founded by Ingvar Kamprad of Sweden . The name IKEA comes from a clever acronym using the initials of the founder, Ingvar Kamprad, who was from a family farm called Elmtaryd, which was near the village of Agunnaryd . The acronym is for a Swedish phrase but it turns out to be the same in English, Ingvar Kamprad's Economical Alternative.
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  Adidas - from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
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  Kodak - Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman. The letter "K" was a favourite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with "K". He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera.