What’s in a name?

Ok, so you have found that great business idea – you’ve researched the market and written your business plan – but what are you going to name your company?

Some Irish companies name their business after the founder’s surname, e.g. O’Doherty Meats or Ryanair. Often people use the initials of their name or the type of business that it is, i.e. CRH stands for Cement Roadstone Ireland.

Here are some examples of interesting company names and the backstories behind them.

1. Google: The name started as a joke about the amount of information the search engine could search, or a “Googol” of information. (A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.) When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin gave a presentation to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to “Google.”

2. Reebok: Reebok is simply an alternate spelling of “rhebok,” an African antelope. The company founders found the word in a South African edition of a dictionary won by Joe Foster, son of the Reebok founder J.W. Foster.

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