How popular tech companies got their names

From Apple to Adobe to Twitter to Microsoft, the names of some of the world’s most popular and successful tech companies tend to have some very interesting and significant back stories. But what’s in a name? Here are some of the most fascinating stories of how they got their names:

Adobe
Adobe has been an important tech company for a long time, they have products like Photoshop and Illustrator. The story behind the Adobe name is quite simply, the company was named after Adobe Creek which ran behind co-founder, John Warnock’s house.
Steve Jobs came up with the name after he visited an Oregon commune that had an apple orchard, the company couldn't think of a better alternative name so they decided to just go with it! According to Steve Jobs he liked the name because it was fun, spirited and not intimidating.



Blackberry
Research In Motion asked a consulting company to come up with a name for its new email messaging device, the consulting company noticed that the keys on the device looked like the skin of a blackberry, hence the name was born. The name Blackberry was believed to be natural, entertaining and full of joy.


When you receive a tweet your phone would buzz, jitter and twitch, the company weren't a fan of “jitter” or “twitch” so they decided to look in the dictionary for something similar and from there they found “twitter” – to make a continent call of a light, quivery sound – Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey felt that the word described Twitter perfectly.


Skype
We all know Skype, originally it was called Skyper, this name was first taken from what the service did: “Sky peer to peer.” The name was then shortened to Skype.



Microsoft
It was the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, who originally came up with the name. The name is actually a combination of the words Microprocessor and Software, the name used to be Micro-Soft, but the hyphen was then removed to make Microsoft!



Google
When the company was first starting out, they wanted a name that was based on the mathematical term “googol” (a large number that is 1 followed by 100 zeros). It’s not really said exactly how the name changed to Google, some say that an investor once wrote “Google” on a cheque instead of “Googol”. Either way, the name just stuck.

We use these services almost every day, from chatting to friends on Skype to searching something on Google, they’re embedded in our everyday life, but we often don’t even think about the interesting stories behind the companies.

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Written By: Christine Romans
CopyWriter at The Computer Guyz Cape Town

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