Origin of the name of Web actors

Where do the Web businesses have taken their names?

Some were jokes, others have a more serious but unexpected source ...

• Adobe
  This is the name of a river (Adobe Creek) near Los Altos, California running near the house of one of the founders.
• Amazon
  The company was originally called Cadabra, but this was sometimes pronounced cadaver, and they moved to the name of the largest river in the world.
• Apple
  Apple was the favorite fruit of Steve Jobs and he was used to eat only it at one time. According to legend he had threatened to call the company Apple Computer if no one offered a better name before 5 pm.
  But it was also the name of the Beatles' record company that it had been just dissolved at this time, freeing the use of the name.
• Cisco
  This is a shortcut to San Francisco where the company is based in Silicon Valley.
• Commodore
  Jack Tramiel who worked for the army, wanted to call his company (which manufactured typewriters) General. But the name was of too common use, and Admiral was already taken, then it was called Commodore, which is below admiral.
• Corel
  Acronym of Cowpland REsearch Laboratory.
• eBay
  Originally named AuctionMasters, linked to a firm whose name was Echo Bay Technology Group, they wanted to take the domain EchoBay but it was already registered then a shorter name was chosen.
• GoDaddy
  A major U.S. registrars, founded in 1997, was named Jomax Technologies. In search of a name more friendly, they found that "Big Daddy", by reference to Big Brother would be original, but the domain was already taken. GoDaddy seemed to them easy to remember and they have found nothing better.
• Google
  The founders chose to name the company Googol, which is a very large number, 1 followed by 100 zeros. But in English the pronunciation is the same as Google, which does not mean anything.
  Investor unaware of the mathematics have sent them a check of 100 000$ labeled to Google so it was registered under that name!
  Actually the domain googol.com was already registered since 1995.
• Hotmail
  Failing to find a name ending with mail that is not already used, the founder of the service later acquired by Microsoft chosen HoTMaiL to mark the use of HTML.
• Intel
  The founders were named Moore and Noyce, but Moore-Noyce was already used. In addition the name Moore Noyce Electronics sounded like "noise" which was annoying for an electronic firm.
  They then chose a shortcut to INTegrated ELectronics.
• Lotus
  The founder Mitch Kapor had been a professor in transcendental meditation, that evokes the lotus position.
• Lycos
  Comes from Lycosidae, a class of spiders, referring to the web (spider web).
• Microsoft
  Originally called Micro-Soft, short for Microcomputer Software, then simplified in Microsoft.
• Novell
  The wife of the founder wanted to choose this name because she thought it meant "new" in French. "Nouvelle" is the feminine of new or the name of a current news coverage.
• Oracle
  It was the name of a CIA project for a system that can provide answers to all questions one would pose. It gave birth to SQL at IBM.
  This project has been abandoned, but Larry Ellison and Bob Oats who were working on it decided to pursue it for their own account on the basis of an RDBMS using SQL.
• Red Hat
  The founder was wearing a red cap with white stripes was often called "the one with the red cap" when asked who could solve a problem. When he lost his cap, he placed an ad in the manual of Linux for anyone that would have found it. The name has been forwarded to his Linux version.
• Yahoo!
  Comes from the book "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift. This designetes a vaguely human person, rather repulsive and this is how considered themselves Jerry Yang and David Filo the founders!
  

Other computer players

• Asus
  This corresponds to the end of the word "pegasus". Pegasus is a mythical creature, a flying horse that inspires a creative spirit. The shortcut was made for the "A" initial.
• Compaq
  The first computers were compact and portable, hence the name.
• Epson
  Comes from SON of Electronic Printer.
• Nokia
  The company was established in the Finnish town of Nokia from which it was renamed.
• Sony
  Comes from the Latin Sonus that means sound.

Documents

• Origin of the Apple logo.