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Do you know ...
How these names came about?!?
History of Names
(Related to Computer Industry)
(Arranged Alphabetically)
Adobe
It came from name of the river Adobe Creek
that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.
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.
Jakarta
(project from Apache)
A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a webserver handling
servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the
conference room at SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and
Apache took place.
Apple Computers
Derived from favourite fruit of founder
Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and
he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues
didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.
C++
Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with
Classes' and then
new C. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was
considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti
suggested the name C++ as a successor to C.
CISCO
Its not an acronymn but the short for San Francisco.
Compaq
Using Comp, for computer, and
paq to denote a small integral object.
Corel
Derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for
Cowpland
Research Laboratory.
Google
The name started as
a jokey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be
able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number
represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford grad
students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel
investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google' !
Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web
from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the
business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in
mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters
"html" - the programming language used to
write web pages. It was initially referred to as Hotmail
with selective upper casing.
HP
Bill Hewlett and Dave
Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the
company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce'
but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for
an acronym of Integrated
Electronics.
Java
Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that
stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute
as there was another language with the same name. Java was selected from a
list of suggestions. It came from the name of the
coffee that the programmers drank.
LG
A combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky
and Goldstar.
Linux
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system
which he replaced by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus'
Minix). He thought the name to be too
egotistical and planned to name it Freax (free + freak + x). His friend Ari
Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily
downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server, as he
did not like the name Freax. (Linus' parents named him after two-time Nobel
Prize winner Linus Pauling).
Microsoft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to
Microcomputer
Software. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed
later on.
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.
Mozilla
When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a broswer to
replace Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer,
Godzilla). The marketing guys didn't
like the name however and it was re-christened
Netscape Navigator.
ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for
the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). 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). The project was designed to help use the newly
written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and
Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept
the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name
for the company.
SAP
"Systems,
Applications, Products
in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the
'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.
Sony
Derived from the Latin word 'sonus'
meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used
by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for
Stanford University
Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a
microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture
computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the
computer.
UNIX
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed
Information and
Computing System),
which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, Ken Thompson and Dennis
Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS. They needed the OS
to run the game Space War which was compiled under MULTICS. It was called
UNICS - UNIplexed operating and
Computing System
by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.
Xerox
The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say dry'
(as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet
copying). The Greek root `xer' means
dry.
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.
3M
Minnesota
Mining and Manufacturing
Company started off by mining the material corundum used to make sandpaper.
Fact: 90% of world computers run
Microsoft Windows as their operating system
Courtesy: Naseem Amjad
(Thanks!)
Edited & redesigned by: Muhammad Ajmal
Beig Naz
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Category:
Computers are like air conditioners, they stop working properly if you
open Windows.
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