The document provides tips for choosing a good company name, including choosing a name that is connected to your business, meaningful, unique, and easy to remember. It then gives the origins and meanings behind the names of famous companies like Yahoo, Xerox, Sun Microsystems, Sony, SAP, Red Hat, Oracle, Motorola, Microsoft, Lotus Notes, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Hotmail, Google, Cisco, Apple, Linux, and Adobe.

1. HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD
COMPANY NAME

2. You can create GOOD COMPANY
Names using this ideas
• a name which are connected to your
nature of business
• a name which is meaningful
• a name which is easy to pronounce or
remember
• a name which is very unique /
different / extraordinary
• a name which is connected to future
2

3. You can create GOOD COMPANY
Names using this ideas
• a name which should not be used by
others
• a name which gives you hope
• a name which brings luck
• a name is combination of directors
names
• a coined word which sound nice
3

4. You can create GOOD COMPANY
Names using this ideas
• name of place connected to your business
• a name which is extraordinary
• a name which is different of others
• a name which is futuristic sounding
• a name which is easy to spell
• a name which sounds good in different
languages but has a meaning

5. You can create GOOD COMPANY
Names using this ideas
• a name which takes into account
numerology
• a name which has a shortform meaning
• a name which bring power
• a name which is a combination of two
words
• a name in English Language or Bahasa
Malaysia – preferably
• a name which can be registered as a dot-
com domain name

6. 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.
• The name Yahoo! is an acronym
for "Yet Another Hierarchical
Officious Oracle," but Filo and
Yang insist they selected the
name because they liked the
general definition of a yahoo:
"rude, unsophisticated,
uncouth."

7. Xerox
• The Greek root "xer"
means dry. The
inventor, Chestor
Carlson, named his
product Xerox as it
was dry copying,
markedly different
from the then
prevailing wet
copying.

8. Sun Microsystems
• Founded by four
Stanford University
buddies, Sun is the
acronym for
Stanford University
Network.

9. Sony
• From the Latin word
'sonus' meaning
sound, and 'sonny' a
slang used by
Americans to refer
to a bright
youngster.

10. SAP
• "Systems,
Applications, Products
in Data Processing",
formed by four ex-IBM
employees who used to
work in the
'Systems/Applications/
Projects' group of IBM.
"Systems, Applications,
Products in Data
Processing", formed by
four ex-IBM employees
who used to work in the
'Systems/Applications/
Projects' group of IBM.

11. Red Hat
Company founder Marc
Ewing was given the
Cornell lacrosse team
cap (with red and white
stripes) while at college
by his grandfather. He
lost it and had to search
for it desperately. The
manual of the beta
version of Red Hat
Linux had an appeal to
readers to return his
Red Hat if found by
anyone!

12. ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob
Oats were working on a
consulting project for
the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). 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).

13. 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.

14. Microsoft
It was coined by Bill
Gates to represent
the company that
was devoted to
MICROcomputer
SOFTware.
Originally
christened Micro-
Soft, the '-' was
removed later on.

15. Lotus Notes
Mitch Kapor got the
name for his
company from the
lotus position or
'padmasana.' Kapor
used to be a teacher
of Transcendental
Meditation of
Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi.

16. 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.

17. Hewlett-Packard
Bill Hewlett and
Dave Packard
tossed a coin to
decide whether the
company they
founded would be
called Hewlett-
Packard or Packard-
Hewlett.

18. Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the
idea of accessing email 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 casings.

19. Google
The name started as a
jockey boast about the
amount of information the
search-engine would be able
to search. It was originally
named 'Googol', a word for
Brin: We were thinking about very large the number represented by 1
numbers ... so we came up with the term followed by 100 zeros. After
"googol" which is the mathematical term founders - Stanford graduate
for 10 to the hundredth (power). The students Sergey Brin and
correct spelling was g-o-o-g-o-l and I'm Larry Page presented their
not sure that we realized that we had project to an angel investor,
made a spelling error. But that was taken, they received a cheque
anyway. There was this guy who'd already
registered Googol.com, and I tried to buy
made out to 'Google
it from him, but he was fond of it. So we
went with Google. “

20. Cisco
The name is not an
acronym but an
abbreviation of San
Francisco. The
company's logo
reflects its San
Francisco name
heritage. It
represents a
stylized Golden Gate
Bridge.

21. Apple
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.

22. Linux
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.

23. Adobe
The name came
from the river Adobe
Creek that ran
behind the house of
founder John
Warnock.