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How Some Electronics Companies Got Their Names
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- Kodak: Founder George Eastman named the camera and film corporation in 1888. Eastman wanted a short name that was easy to pronounce and could only refer to his products. He later said that he favored the letter “k” because it “seems a strong, incisive sort of letter.” Once Eastman decided he wanted the name to start and end with “k,” he played around with combinations of letters until he found one that he liked in “Kodak.”
- Nintendo: Nintendo’s name translates into English as “leave luck to heaven.” The name made more sense before Nintendo got into the video game business; it opened in 1889 to make hanafuda cards, a type of Japanese playing cards decorated with floral designs.
- Sony: When Sony got its start in 1946, it had a decidedly less catchy name – Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. Within a few years, the company’s founders wanted a new name, so they combined sonus, Latin for “sound,” with “Sonny,” the term of endearment for a young boy. The newly coined word captured both the superior sound quality and small size the company was shooting for with its products.
- Nokia: The modern telecom giant hasn’t always been involved in such tech-heavy fields. The company got its start in Tampere, Finland, in 1865 as a pulp mill and paper manufacturer. When owner Fredrik Idestam opened a second plant in Nokia, Finland, in 1868, he decided the town’s name would suit his company, too.The town takes its name from the Nokianvirta River that flows through it, which in turn takes its name from an archaic Finnish word referring to the small furry animals, mostly sables, which lived on the river’s banks.
- Sanyo: Sanyo’s name means “three oceans” in Japanese; the company’s founder wanted to sell his wares across the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans to reach the entire world.
