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Apple - At the time the company was named, Steve Jobs was following a fruitarian diet and was inspired after a visit to an apple farm.

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Starbucks - The popular coffee shop was named after a 'Moby-Dickk' character.

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eBay - The company was owned by Echo Bay Technology Group but as the original URL Echobay was already taken, they had to shorten it to eBay.

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Pepsi - The founders of the beverage brand derived the name from the digestive enzyme pepsin.

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Adidas - The shoe, clothing, and accessory company was given the name Adidas in honor of the nickname of its founder Adolf “Adi” Dassler.

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IKEA - The company's name is an acronym combing the initials of founder Ingvar Kamprad with the initials of the place where he grew up, Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.

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Volkswagen - The name of the car translates to "people's car" from German.

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Google - The search engine gets its name from the mathematical term, googol, which is the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.

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Coca-Cola - The name supposedly comes from the coca leaves and kola nuts used in the original recipe.

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Vodafone - The name combines the words voice, data, and telephone.

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Sony - The name was taken from the Latin word "sonus," meaning sound, and was chosen because it can be easily pronounced in most languages.

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Skype - Skype became a shortened form of the original name Sky Peer-to-Peer.

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Häagen-Dazs - The founder of the ice cream company supposedly gave it a "Danish-sounding name" in tribute to Denmark's exemplary treatment of the Jews during WWII.

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Yahoo! - Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle" or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

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Nabisco - The snack manufacturer combines its full name, National Biscuit Company, into the shortened form Nabisco.

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LEGO - The name is a shortened form of the Danish phrase "leg godt," meaning play well.

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Verizon - Verizon is a combination of the words "veritas" (meaning "truth" in Latin) and "horizon."

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WD-40 - The "WD" stands for water-displacing [spray] while the "40" indicates the number of trials necessary to manufacture the formula in the lab.

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Spotify - During a name brainstorming meeting with cofounders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzen, Ek mistakenly heard an idea as "spotify" and they decided to stick with the random name.

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Nokia - The company was named after the location where it started as a wood pulp mill, just outside of Nokia, Finland.

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CVS Pharmacy - The name was originally Consumer Value Stores but was changed to the acronym CVS, standing for "customer, value, service," by CEO Tom Ryan in 1996.

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Kia -

According to Kia's website, "The word Kia has origins in the Chinese language with the first syllable Ki meaning to arise or come up out of." The remaining "a" refers to Asia, so "Kia means to rise or come up out of Asia."

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Audi - The car manufacturer got its name from a translation of founder August Horch's last name. Horch means "listen" in German, which then translates to "audi" in Latin.

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Virgin Records - When Richard Branson and his business partner were first starting the company, they considered themselves to be "virgins in business."

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Blackberry - The name comes from the appearance of the keyboard—the black keys resemble the drupelets on the fruit.

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Reebok -

The name Reebok is derived from the Afrikaans word “rhebok,” which is the name of an antelope found on the African savanna. The founder's grandson, Joe Foster, chose the word from a South African dictionary he won in a running race.

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Nintendo -

The gaming company's name is Japanese and roughly translates to "leave luck to Heaven."

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Adobe - The company was named after the creek that ran through founder John Warnock's property, Adobe Creek.

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Sharp Corporation - The company was named after its first product, the ever-sharp mechanical pencil invented by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1915.

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Sega -

The name is short for Service Games of Japan, as the company's earliest products were games manufactured for the US military based in the Pacific Rim.

See also: What were cabinets of curiosities?

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