How Tech Companies Got Their Names

Some brand names come from mythology, and some come from something as plain as which domain was free cough Symph. Dave, Symph's co-founder, also wanted a short name.

"Apart from its availability, Symph is also short for symphony, and I like to think of business as a symphony, as there are a number of parts that all have to be in harmony to make music."

That sounds too simple, but plenty of today's tech giants got their names in much the same way. Some even went to a thesaurus, and we're willing to bet it was a paper one and not thesaurus.com (yes kids, they exist).

Google

Google was originally called Backrub. Thankfully, the founders went with a playful take on googol, the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by a hundred zeroes. That fits a search engine built to carry a huge amount of data, and the amount keeps growing.

Image from Google, of course.

Adobe

Adobe started in co-founder John Warnock's garage, and Adobe Creek ran behind it. (Notice how many big names in tech started in a garage?) Nokia's name has a similar story, since the mobile phone company is named after the city in Finland where it started.

Tinder

Tinder started out as "Matchbox". The founders stuck to a fire theme because the app is meant to create a romantic spark, so they looked in a thesaurus and landed on Tinder.

Amazon

Ironically, Amazon's name was not taken from geography the way Adobe's and Nokia's were. Amazon.com was almost called "Cadabra", from the magic word "Abracadabra", but the name was dropped because people often misheard it as "cadaver".

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, wanted a name starting with "A" so it would show up early in alphabetical order (website listings were often alphabetical back then). He went through the dictionary and settled on "Amazon" to suggest scale.

Fun fact, Amazon's logo stands for the service selling items from a to z.

Apple

Apple's name is as simple as the company's style. According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, the name came up during one of Jobs' fruitarian diets. He had come back from an apple farm and thought the name sounded "fun, spirited and not intimidating."

"Partially because I like Apples a lot and partially because Apple is ahead of Atari in the phonebook and I used to work at Atari," Jobs said. Alphabetical listing was their version of SEO, okay.

Airbnb

Airbnb went the more modern way, where the shorter the brand name, the trendier. Founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, Airbnb's first hosts, called themselves Air Bed and Breakfast when they started, after the air mattresses their guests slept on.

"We thought we could make some money if we rented out our place and turned it into a bed and breakfast. We got three airbeds and created a website called "Air Bed and Breakfast."Joe Gebbia, co-founder, said in an interview. The name was later shortened to Airbnb.

Sources: thenextweb.com, google.com/about and businessinsider.com