Adobe
It came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of

founder John Warnock.

Apache
It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code

written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A Patchy' server -- thus,

the name Apache.

Jakarta (project from Apache)
A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a webserver handling

servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room at SUN where

most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.

Apple Computers
Derived from favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in

filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple

Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

C++
Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then new C.

Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was

considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti suggested

the name C++ as a successor to C.


CISCO
Its not an acronymn but the short for San Francisco.

Compaq
Using Comp, for computer, and paq to denote a small integral object.

Corel
Derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for

Cowpland Research Laboratory.

Google
the name started as a jokey boast about the amount of information

the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol',

a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders

- Stanford grad students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project

to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to

Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a

computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the

business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in mail'

and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the

programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as

Hotmail with selective upper casing.


HP
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company

they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore

Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to

settle for an acronym of Integrated Electronics.

Java
Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood

outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute as there

was another language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of

suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.

LG
A combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Linux
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he replaced

by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought the

name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax (free + freak + x). His

friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be

easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server,

as he did not like the name Freax. (Linus' parents named him after two-time

Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling).


Mcft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to

Microcomputer Software. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed

later on.

Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started

manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was

called Victrola.

Mozilla
When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a broswer to replace

Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer,

Godzilla). The marketing guys didn't like the name however and it was

re-christened Netscape Navigator.

ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA

(Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called

Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or

something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL

code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob

decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the

name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name

for the company.

SAP
"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM

employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of

IBM.


Sony
Derived from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used

by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford

University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod

Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it,

and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.

UNIX
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and

Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, Ken

Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS.

They needed the OS to run the game Space War which was compiled under

MULTICS. It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System

by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.

Xerox
The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say dry' (as it was

dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The

Greek root `xer' means dry.

Yahoo!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's

Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action

and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the

name because they considered themselves yahoos.

3M
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the

material corundum used to make sandpaper.

Good eexplanation BA....and funny in a way........