BRAND SPECIAL...BRAND NAMES STORIES 1 TO 10

BRAND NAMES STORIES 1 TO 10

1 Pepsi was named after the medical term for indigestion.

The inventor of Pepsi, Caleb Davis Bradham, originally wanted to be a doctor, but a family crisis meant that he left medical school and became a pharmacist instead, according to the company website.

His original invention, known as “Brad’s Drink,” was made from a mix of sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, and nutmeg. Three years later, Bradham renamed his drink, which he believed aided digestion, to “Pepsi-Cola," taken from the word dyspepsia, meaning indigestion.

 

2 Google owes its name to a typo.

Google's name emerged from a brainstorming session at Stanford University. Founder Larry Page was coming up with ideas for a massive data-index website with other graduate students, Business Insider reported.

One of the suggestions was "googolplex" one of the largest describable numbers. The name 'Google' came about after one of the students accidentally spelled it wrong. Page then registered his company with this name.

3 McDonald's is named after two brothers who ran a burger restaurant.

Raymond Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, was a milkshake machine salesman when he first met brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, who ran a burger restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

The McDonald brothers bought several of his Kroc's Multimixers and he was so impressed by their burger restaurant that he became their agent and set up franchises around the US, Money reported. Years later, he bought rights to the McDonald's name.

4 Adidas isn't an acronym for "All Day I Dream About Soccer."

If you, like me, thought Adidas stood for "All Day I Dream About Soccer," you're wrong. It turns out the athletics-apparel brand is named after its founder, Adolf Dassler, who started making sport shoes when he came back from serving in World War I, according to the LA Times. The name combines his nickname, Adi, and the first three letters of his last name.

5 J. Crew's name set it up to compete with Ralph Lauren's Polo line.

According to Forbes, "The name Crew was picked to compete with Ralph Lauren’s Polo label and [founder Arthur] Cinader added the J because he thought it added [cachet]."

Makes sense. Polo and crew are both pretty preppy sports.

6 "A genie whispered 'Rolex,'" in the founder's ear.

Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, wanted a brand name that could be said in any language, Business Insider reported.

"I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way," said Wilsdorf, according to Rolex. "This gave me some hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, a genie whispered 'Rolex' in my ear."

7 Lululemon means nothing at all. And it's intentionally hard to pronounce.

Lululemon founder Chip Wilson came up with the yoga-wear brand's name because he thought Japanese people wouldn't be able to pronounce it. 

He wrote in 2009:

"It was thought that a Japanese marketing firm would not try to create a North American sounding brand with the letter 'L' because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics. By including an 'L' in the name it was thought the Japanese consumer would find the name innately North American and authentic."

"In essence, the name 'lululemon' has no roots and means nothing other than it has 3 'L's' in it. Nothing more and nothing less."

A representative for Lululemon told Business Insider that the brand's name was chosen from a list of 20 brand names and 20 logos by a group of 100 people.

8 Zara came from Zorba, it's original name.

Zara founder Amancio Ortega originally named his company after the 1964 film, “Zorba the Greek." But this didn't last long.

The first store, which opened in La Coruña in 1975, happened to be two blocks down from a bar called Zorba, The New York Times reported. Ortega had already made the mold for the letters of his sign when the bar owner told him that it was too confusing for them to have the same name.

In the end, Ortega ended up rearranging the letters to make the closest word he could come up with — hence Zara, according to The New York Times.

9 ASOS is an abbreviation of AsSeenOnScreen.

The British online retailer was founded as AsSeenOnScreen in 1999 and lived at asseenonscreen.com. The abbreviation ASOS — which, by the way, is pronounced ACE-OSS — quickly caught on, and the website was shortened to asos.com.

10 IKEA isn't actually a Swedish word.

IKEA isn't a Swedish word that you don't understand.

Founder Ingvar Kamprad chose the brand name by combining the initials of his own name, IK, with the first letters of the farm and village, where grew up in southern Sweden: Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd.