Saturday, August 26, 2006

How Was "Velcro" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Velcro
The hook and loop fastener was invented in 1948 by Georges de Mestral, a Swiss engineer. The idea came to him after he took a close look at the Burdock seeds which kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur on their daily walk in the Alps. De Mestral named his invention "VELCRO" after the French words velours, meaning 'velvet', and crochet, meaning 'hook'. Today, the uses and applications of the product are numerous, and the word "velcro" has even become a verb in the english language, much like "e-mail" or "fax."



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posted by Staff @ 7:59 PM  

How Was "Charmin" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Charmin
Charmin is a brand-name of extra-soft toilet paper owned by Procter & Gamble.

The Charmin name was first created in 1928 by the Hoberg Paper Company in Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA. The toilet paper was described as charming, thus, the name still used today.

Older advertisements featured the fictional grocer Mr. Whipple who told customers, "Please don't squeeze the Charmin!".




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posted by Staff @ 7:51 PM  

How Was "Arizona Iced Tea" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Arizona Iced Tea
The AriZona Beverage Company is a popular producer of various flavours of Iced Tea and Energy drinks from the United States, based in Lake Success, New York. The AriZona Beverage Company is a branch of Ferolito, Vultaggio & Sons, which started out as a beer brewery in New York City.

It was named in honor of the U.S. state of Arizona, presumably where its founders were inspired to make a cold drink that could aid in battling the hot weather there.




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posted by Staff @ 7:40 PM  

How Was "Slinky" Named?

From Wikipedia & About.com:

Slinky
A Slinky is a coil-shaped toy, invented by mechanical engineer Richard James in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Slinkys come in various sizes, but are usually no larger than a grown adult's fist when compressed. The shape is a simple helix, or coil design, of a ribbon of material, originally metal. The Slinky is famous for its ability to "walk" down stairs as the coils stretch and reform as gravity moves them down each step.

Richard James told his wife Betty, "I think I can make a toy out of this" and then spent the next two years figuring out the best steel gauge and coil to use for the toy. Betty James found a name for the new toy after discovering in the dictionary that the word "Slinky" is a Swedish word meaning traespiral - sleek or sinuous.




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posted by Staff @ 7:36 PM  

How Was "Ovaltine" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Ovaltine
Ovaltine (registered trademark of Associated British Foods) is a brand of milk flavoring product made with sugar (except in Switzerland), malt extract, cocoa, and whey, by Wander AG, a subsidiary of Novartis Consumer Goods. It was developed in Switzerland, where it is known by its original name, Ovomaltine (from ovum, Latin for "egg", and malt, originally its main ingredients). The person credited with its original formulation is Dr. Albert Wander, son of the company's founder Dr. Georg Wander. Both Drs. Wander spent their lives working with malted barley extracts as nutritious food supplements. Also remember that "Ovaltine" is an anagram for "Vital One".




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posted by Staff @ 6:53 PM  

How Was "Yahoo!" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American computer services company. It operates an Internet portal, the Yahoo! Directory and a host of other services including Yahoo! Mail. It was founded by Stanford graduate students David Filo and Jerry Yang in January of 1994 and incorporated on March 2, 1995. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

Yahoo! started out as "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web", a web site featuring a directory of other sites, organized in a hierarchy (rather than a searchable index of pages). It was renamed "Yahoo!" shortly thereafter. "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" is a backronym for this name, but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." As the backronymed version of the name implies, it was not the first directory of its kind, but it was the first to become widely popular as "the" directory of the fledgling Web. Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki", both named after famous sumo wrestlers. The "yet another" phrasing goes back at least to the Unix utility yacc, whose name is an acronym for "yet another compiler compiler".




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posted by Staff @ 6:20 PM  

How Was "Shaw's" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Shaw's Supermarkets
Shaw's, along with sister store, Star Market, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Supervalu. The company is presently the second largest grocery group in the northeast United States.

In the late 1850s, George C. Shaw opened a small teashop in Portland, ME. Meanwhile, Maynard A. Davis established a group of small downtown grocery stores in the Brockton and New Bedford areas called Brockton Public Market or BPM. In 1919, Mr. Davis purchased George C. Shaw Company and made it a subsidiary of BPM. In 1978, BPM stores in Massachusetts changed their names to Shaw's Supermarkets, Inc. to maximize advertising. It was the first step in the contemplated merger of the two companies.




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posted by Staff @ 1:45 PM  

Sunday, August 20, 2006

How Was "Nike" Named?

From Nike History:

Nike
Nike got its start in Eugene, Oregon, and was the creation of two men, Bill Bowerman (1911–1999) and Philip Knight (1938–). Bowerman was a track-and-field coach at the University of Oregon who was constantly searching for an athletic shoe that would help his teams run faster and jump higher. Knight was a businessman who had been a runner on one of Bowerman's teams when he was in college. Knight and Bowerman teamed up in 1962, first to import Japanese running shoes, then to experiment with their own designs. They called their company Blue Ribbon Sports.

Though Knight and Bowerman were successful in creating shoes that improved athletes' performance on the field, they had to figure out how to sell their shoes to a wider market. In 1972, they adopted the name Nike, after the winged Greek goddess of victory, and their trademark "swoosh." The trademark was designed by Carolyn Davidson, a Portland State University graphic design student who was paid about $40 for the logo.






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posted by Staff @ 2:40 PM  

How Was "Oakley" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Oakley, Inc.
Oakley is an eyewear company known mostly for their high end sunglasses and ski goggles. They also make watches, clothing, bags, backpacks, shoes, prescription glasses and other accessories. Their headquarters in the USA is in Foothill Ranch, CA and Letchworth, Hertfordshire in the UK.

Oakley's current chairman is Jim Jannard, who owns approximately 68% of the outstanding shares (2006), and reputedly named the company after his English setter Oakley.




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posted by Staff @ 12:08 PM  

How Was "Audi" Named?

From Wikipedia:

Audi is a German automobile manufacturer with headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group. Audi is a Latin translation of the German name 'Horch'. The founder August Horch left the company after five years, but still wanted to manufacture cars. Since the original 'Horch' company was still there, he called his new company Audi, the Latin form of his last name. In English it is: "hark!".




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posted by Staff @ 10:45 AM