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Why does all the names of various technologies sound weird? How did they derive their names? Lets have a look at some of them.





Nintendo

Nintendo is a Japanese firm, which designs games for PlayStations, Xboxes and PC. The three words “Nin” “ten” “do” is Japanese for “we do all that we can, as best as we can, and await the results.” Nintendo is sort of a motto and company name all in one. Who knew that the gaming giant was so poetic?

Zappos
Zappos was originally named ShoeSite.com when it was founded in 1999. This posed a bit of a problem when it wanted to start selling more than just shoes. While still quite fond of shoes, the team didn’t abandon the theme entirely. They decided on a variation of the word “shoes” in Spanish. Thus “zapatos” was converted to Zappos for the company name.

Apple
Apple has no official story, which means that you can take your pick of the following rumors:
  • Steve Jobs used to work at a California or Oregon apple farm during the summer. He grew to really appreciate apples.
  • Steve Jobs really liked the Beatles.
  • Steve Jobs was three months late filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if his colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 p.m.
  • Steve Jobs wanted to distance the company from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time.
Blackberry
Despite popular belief, the way that the buttons look a bit like the seeds of a berry wasn’t taken into account. The name BlackBerry was purely a marketing decision. The communications team offered up this explanation in an e-mail:
“RIM wanted a name that would be distinctive, memorable and fun and that would work well internationally and appeal to a wide range of customers. RIM decided to go with a connotative word for the brand name rather than a descriptive or invented word.”

Adobe

Adobe founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke were working for Xerox during the late 70s and early 80s, and living in Los Altos, CA, and Adobe Creek just happens run through the town.
According to the creek’s Wikipedia page, it was named for the nearby house of a 19th Century governor. So, at least in some sense, the company was named for the building material.

Yahoo!

Founders David Filo and Jerry Yang started what would become Yahoo when they were Ph.D. candidates at Stanford University. The project originally consisted of categorized lists of favorite links on the web, which made its original name, “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” at least accurate if not so catchy.
Yahoo is actually an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” But according to the company, the team chose the name for its definition: “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.”

Foursquare
Dodgeball, Dennis Crowley’s first attempt at social networking for mobile phones was acquired by Google in 2005. When Google killed the project, Crowley founded an improved location-based social game he named Foursquare.
Dennis chose to name both companies after playground games because they were both designed to be fun and playful. Apparently Foursquare was actually always Crowley’s first choice, but the domain name wasn’t available when he founded Dodgeball.

Android

Apparently Andy Rubin, the co-founder and former CEO of Android, really likes robots. “You have to be a little bit careful when you’re around Andy and his robots,” says Nick Sears, the other Android co-founder.

Twitter
The name Twitter was picked out of a hat. A small group of employees from Odeo, the San Francisco podcasting startup where Twitter initially began, had a brainstorming session. They were trying to come up with names that fit with the theme of a mobile phone buzzing in your pocket with an update.
After narrowing down the options (which included Jitter and Twitter), they wrote them down, put them in a hat, and let fate decide. Know more about Twitter here.

Facebook
Facebook originally was called thefacebook.com, when the students of Harvard designed it to interact and share files among themselves. Later it turned to Facebook. Know more about Facebook here.


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