Where 60 famous brand names came from: Amazon, Nike, IKEA, Starbucks, Google, Lego and the rest

Published 2026-09-24 · By SmartName

Photo: Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Short answer

Of the 60 famous names below, 17 are founders' names, 12 are real words repurposed, 10 are blends or compounds, 8 are stories or references, 7 are places, 4 are acronyms and only 2 are pure inventions.
The pure invention (Kodak, Häagen-Dazs) is the rarest pattern among famous names, and the one new founders reach for most.
Most famous names were chosen for a practical reason: the phone book (Apple), a printing error (Zara), a lost lawsuit (Accenture), a letter the founder liked (Kodak).
The pattern that works for a small business is the one most of these used: a real word with a real reason.

Famous names look inevitable in hindsight. Most were chosen in an afternoon, for reasons that had nothing to do with destiny: alphabetical order, a letter the founder liked, a bar that already had the name. Here are sixty of them, sorted by how the name was built. The count at the end shows which patterns famous companies actually used, which is a useful corrective to the belief that a great brand needs an invented word.

1. Founders' names (17)

Name	Where it came from
Adidas	Adolf "Adi" Dassler, registered in 1949 after he split from his brother Rudolf.
Puma	Rudolf Dassler's company, first called Ruda, renamed after the big cat in 1948.
Ford	Henry Ford, 1903.
Honda	Soichiro Honda, who founded the company in Hamamatsu in 1948.
Toyota	The Toyoda family. The spelling was changed in 1936 partly because "Toyota" takes eight brush strokes in Japanese, a lucky number, and looked cleaner.
Mercedes-Benz	Mercedes was the daughter of Emil Jellinek, an early dealer who ordered cars under her name; Karl Benz built the first automobile in 1886.
Boeing	William Boeing, who founded Pacific Aero Products in Seattle in 1916 and renamed it the next year.
Disney	Walt and Roy Disney, 1923.
McDonald's	Richard and Maurice McDonald, whose San Bernardino restaurant Ray Kroc franchised from 1955.
Wendy's	Dave Thomas's daughter Melinda, nicknamed Wendy, in 1969.
Levi's	Levi Strauss, San Francisco, 1873.
Colgate	William Colgate's soap and candle business, New York, 1806.
Gillette	King C. Gillette, who patented the safety razor in 1904.
Tiffany & Co.	Charles Lewis Tiffany, New York, 1837.
Ferrari	Enzo Ferrari, 1939.
Dell	Michael Dell, who started it in his dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984.
Walmart	Sam Walton, whose first Walmart opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962.

2. Real words, repurposed (12)

Name	Where it came from
Apple	Steve Jobs had been on a fruit diet and visiting an apple farm; the name sounded friendly and came before Atari in the phone book.
Amazon	Jeff Bezos wanted a name starting with A and chose the largest river in the world, for scale. The working name had been Cadabra.
Slack	A short, relaxed real word; the "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge" backronym came afterward.
Stripe	Chosen in 2011 as a short, clean word with no fixed meaning.
Notion	An idea or a concept, for a tool that holds every kind of note.
Target	Chosen in 1962 for a discount chain: a plain word with a ready-made logo.
Shell	Marcus Samuel's father sold seashells in London; the oil business that grew from the family firm kept the name and the logo.
Caterpillar	A photographer watching an early Holt tractor crawl on its tracks said it moved like a caterpillar; Benjamin Holt trademarked it in 1910.
Jaguar	Chosen in 1935 for a car that was meant to look like it was moving while standing still.
Red Bull	A translation of Krating Daeng, the Thai energy drink Dietrich Mateschitz licensed in 1987; krating is a wild bovine, daeng is red.
Twitter	Jack Dorsey found the word in the dictionary: "a short burst of inconsequential information" and "chirps from birds".
Oracle	The code name of a CIA database project Larry Ellison had worked on.

3. Blends and compounds (10)

Name	Where it came from
Microsoft	Microcomputer + software, 1975.
Netflix	Internet + flicks, 1997.
Instagram	Instant camera + telegram, 2010.
Airbnb	AirBed & Breakfast, the original 2007 idea of renting air mattresses.
Intel	Integrated Electronics, 1968.
Coca-Cola	Two ingredients of the 1886 recipe, coca leaf and kola nut, with the K changed to C for the look of the lettering.
Velcro	The French velours (velvet) + crochet (hook), by the Swiss engineer George de Mestral in the 1950s.
Verizon	Veritas (Latin, truth) + horizon, at the 2000 merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE.
Spotify	Misheard across a room, then explained as spot + identify.
Sony	The Latin sonus (sound) + "sonny", American slang for a bright young man, chosen in 1958 to be pronounceable anywhere.

4. Stories, myths and references (8)

Name	Where it came from
Nike	The Greek goddess of victory, 1971.
Starbucks	Starbuck, the first mate in Moby-Dick.
Bluetooth	Harald Bluetooth, the tenth-century king who united Denmark and Norway, as the standard united devices. The logo combines his runic initials.
Mazda	Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god of wisdom, which also echoes the founder's name, Jujiro Matsuda.
Subaru	The Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster; the six stars in the logo stand for the companies merged into Fuji Heavy Industries.
Samsung	Korean for "three stars": big, numerous and eternal, in the founder's words, 1938.
Nintendo	Usually translated as "leave luck to heaven"; the company began making playing cards in Kyoto in 1889.
Yahoo	The crude creatures in Gulliver's Travels; the founders liked the word's meaning and also offered a backronym.

5. Places (7)

Name	Where it came from
Patagonia	The region of South America, chosen in 1973 for its sense of remote, wild places.
Adobe	Adobe Creek, which ran behind co-founder John Warnock's house in Los Altos.
Cisco	The last letters of San Francisco, where it was founded in 1984; the logo is the Golden Gate Bridge.
Nokia	The Nokianvirta river in Finland, where the company built its second pulp mill in 1868.
Fuji	Japan's mountain, on the film company founded in 1934.
eBay	Founder Pierre Omidyar's consulting firm was Echo Bay; echobay.com was taken, so ebay.com it was, in 1995.
Stumptown Coffee	Portland's nickname from the stumps left when the city was cleared.

6. Acronyms and initials (4)

Name	Where it came from
IKEA	Ingvar Kamprad's initials plus Elmtaryd, his family farm, and Agunnaryd, his village, 1943.
Lego	The Danish leg godt, "play well", 1934. The founder later learned it also means "I put together" in Latin.
H&M	Hennes ("hers" in Swedish, the original women's store, 1947) and Mauritz Widforss, a hunting-goods shop acquired in 1968.
BMW	Bayerische Motoren Werke, Bavarian Motor Works, 1917.

7. Pure inventions (2)

Name	Where it came from
Kodak	George Eastman invented it in 1888: short, impossible to misspell, meaning nothing, starting and ending with his favorite letter.
Häagen-Dazs	Invented in the Bronx in 1960 by Reuben Mattus to sound Danish and traditional; it means nothing in any language, and Danish does not use the umlaut.

What the count says

Seventeen of sixty are a founder's name. Twelve are ordinary words. Ten are two words joined. Only two are inventions, and both were made by people with the budget and the decades to teach the world a new word. The lesson for a new business is the opposite of the instinct: the famous names are mostly real words with real reasons, and the reason is what gets repeated. That is also how SmartName is built: it designs directions first, generates real and coined candidates inside them, and writes the reason for each one.

How the same patterns look in a name generated today

The three names below were generated by SmartName for a Portland coffee-shop brief: a real word plus a trade word, a story object, and a short two-word mark. Each comes with its etymology and the case for it, exactly as delivered.

Descriptive: Warm Word + CoffeeEnglish

Kindling Coffee

A small flame that starts mornings

ETYMOLOGYkindling: from kindle, Middle English kindlen, from Old Norse kynda, to light a fire; coffee: via Dutch koffie from Turkish kahve and Arabic qahwa

Kindling Coffee takes its meaning from the small dry sticks that catch first and get a real fire going. That fits a shop whose owner learned to roast on a camping stove in her grandfather's garage, where a small flame started something lasting. The word feels warm and homely. It suggests early mornings, a first cup, and a neighborhood room that slowly fills with regulars known by name. The trade word sits last, following the pattern seen in about 62 percent of US coffee names, such as Clyde Coffee. A first-time visitor reads the character of the place, then learns plainly what it sells. On the phone the name is easy to catch. It has two clear words, familiar spelling and no letters to explain, so callers and delivery drivers get it right the first time. The soft repeated k sound also gives it a friendly rhythm when spoken aloud.

Unique: Garage-Roast StoryEnglish

Tinderbox Roastery

One small spark, roasted with care

ETYMOLOGYtinder: Old English tynder, dry kindling that catches a spark; box: Old English box, a container; roastery: from Old French rostir, to roast

Tinderbox Roastery takes its name from the old fire-starting kit of flint, steel and dry tinder that households kept before matches, a small box that turned one spark into a working flame. The word fits the shop's origin closely: the owner learned to roast over the small flame of a camping stove in her grandfather's garage, and a tinderbox is exactly that kind of modest, hands-on fire. It is an old craft word that still reads plainly, so it feels warm and grounded rather than clever. Following the pattern most US coffee names use, with the trade word last, Roastery sits at the end and tells passersby at once that roasting happens on site. On a sign the two words balance well, with the vivid image first and the plain promise second. The exact spelling is easy to type and search, and it says itself clearly over the phone.

Stylish: Quiet Nature MarkEnglish

Ember Row

Small fire, familiar street

ETYMOLOGYember: Old English æmerge, a glowing coal left in ash; row: Old English raw, a line of things or houses set side by side

Ember Row pictures a line of glowing coals, the kind of steady, small fire that roasting in small batches depends on. It uses a quiet metaphor from craft and fire. The first word nods to the owner's start on a camping stove in her grandfather's garage, where heat had to be watched closely. The second word borrows the feel of a neighborhood street, a row of houses where regulars are known by name. Most US coffee names put the trade word last, about 61.7 percent of them, like Clyde Coffee. This mark leaves it off, so it reads as a place rather than a product and stands out among longer three-word names. If the shop wants to say what it does, adding Coffee or Roasters after it follows the usual pattern easily. The two short, even syllables in each word sit well on a narrow storefront sign or a coffee bag label.

These names were generated for a test brief during development; they are not real businesses. Before using any name, search your state's business registry and the USPTO trademark database. More generated examples across other industries.

Frequently asked questions

Which pattern do most famous brands use?

Founders' names, then ordinary words with a reason. Among the 60 names here, 17 are founders' names, 12 are real words repurposed, 10 are blends or compounds, and only 2 are pure inventions.

Is an invented word better for a brand?

It is easier to trademark and harder to make memorable. Kodak and Häagen-Dazs had decades and large budgets to teach the world a new word. A small business usually does better with a real word and a real reason.

Are these origins verified?

They are as reported by the companies themselves and in standard business references. Where a company's own account is disputed (Spotify, Yahoo), the note says so.

Can SmartName generate names in these patterns?

Yes. It designs directions (descriptive, story, place, blend, coined and so on) from the statistics of real names in your trade, generates candidates inside each, and writes the etymology and the case for every name it delivers.

A name with a story of its own.

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