I started a venture back in 2007 with one of my friends. I was good at writing and she was a fantastic graphic designer. The business was about offering integrated marketing solutions to the small-to-mid sized companies where the design teams are usually non-existent but they have specific B2B needs of showcasing their work at different arena. It had a great start and we got a couple of projects in the initial phase. When we both were at it – one struggling phase was to coin a name for our company. Something, that should depict our business yet be unique and beautiful. For any start-up, it is extremely important to pick up a name which is not only close to the heart of the creator but also have some meaning to it. And trust me, it’s not an easy task. We called it ‘The Design House’ but unfortunately, it could not be sustained as I had to start my MBA and my friend had to leave for immigration.

This struggle started again when I was looking for a name for this blog. Although I have jotted down all the options that came to my mind and how I made peace with ‘What the Words’ in the ‘About this Blog’ section but can you imagine that it took me a MONTH to settle on this name??? Man this is too much of a time especially when you are dying to start up asap but a name is what that remains forever and I didn’t want to regret over my decision later. Hence, the wait.

This entire thought process made me think how big companies get their names or tag lines??? And can you imagine, the more I read about companies’ history, the more astonished I grew. I thought it would be interesting to share the summary of what I dug about multinationals and trust me – this task is never easy for anyone 🙂

So Nike’s JUST DO IT tagline (nike.com) comes from the last words spoken by a spree killer Gary Gilmore who was given death penalty in 1976 and was asked if he had to say anything before the execution and he said: “Let’s Do it”. Dan Wieden, founder of Nike’s advertisement agency, credits the inspiration for his “Just Do It” Nike slogan to Gary Gilmore’s last words. Wow!

I always thought that adidas (adidas.com) means “All Day I Dream About Sports” but this is actually the combination of the nick name “Adi” and the last name “Dassler”of the company’s owner, Adolf Dassler. So no rocket science here – you just add up your nicks and see where it goes 😉

Google – our favorite website (google.com) to check whether internet is working or not in the developing countries like Pakistan ;p is the mis-spelling of the mathematical terms “Googol” – which means a 1 followed by 100 zeros. This name was picked to signify that their search engine is intended to provide large quantities of information. Now this is both creativity and logic. I’m impressed!

Facebook (facebook.com) was the name of the book handed over to the new students of Stanford to get to know each other better by the college administration. It contained pictures and basic intro of the students. So the founder carried on the same thought and name for his website.

During the time when Steve Job was looking for a name for his company, he was on a fruitarian diet and had returned from an apple farm. Guess the impression of his diet regime were pretty strong on his mind and hence he settled for the name “Apple”. He thought it sounded “fun, spirited and not intimidating”. Now, this was easy I guess 🙂

Image Source: wikimedia.org

It was also dawned upon me that all the planets’ name were taken from Greek gods but Earth is the only name which is not taken/inspired from any god. In plain English, it means “ground” so here goes our history!

Anyway, dear readers, for your start-up names also, I would genuinely suggest to combine some punk and logic together to see where it goes. It is indeed an interesting exercise… 🙂

PS: All the images (except for Apple) are sourced from wikipedia.org.