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Subj:.....Companies
That Use
..........Acronyms
Or Initials (S699b)
From: tom on 6/6/2010
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1. CVS
Sorry, drugstore fans,
there aren’t
three fatcat pharmacists
with these initials running around out there.
When the pharmacy
chain was founded
in Lowell, MA in
1963, it was known
as “Consumer Value
Stores.” Over
time the name became
abbreviated to
simply CVS.
Photo from OBRag.org |
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| 2. K-Mart
Longtime five-and-dime
mogul Sebastian S. Kresge opened his first larger store in Garden City,
Michigan, in 1962. The store was named K-Mart after him. (Kresge had earned
the right to have a store named for him; he opened up his new venture at
the tender age of 94.)
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3. IKEA
The Swedish furniture
giant and noted charity takes its name from found Ingvar Kamprad’s initials
conjoined with a the first initial of the farm where Kamprad grew up, Elmtaryd,
and the parish he calls home, Agunnaryd.
Photo from ScrapTV.com |
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| 4. JBL
The speaker company
is named after its founder, James Bullough Lansing. But if Lansing had
kept his original name, the company might have been called Martini Speakers.
Lansing was born James Martini
in 1902, but when
he was 25, he changed
his name to James
Lansing at the suggest-
ion of the woman
who would become his
wife. (The martini
was already a popular cocktail at the time, and several of Lansing’s brothers
had also changed their name by shortening it to Martin.)
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5. BVD
The stalwart men’s
underwear maker was originally founded by a group of New Yorkers named
Bradley, Voorhees, and Day to make women’s bustles. Eventually the trio
branched out into knitted union suits for men, and their wares became so
popular that “BVDs” has become a generic term for any underwear.
Photo from GQ
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| 6. DHL
In the late 1960s,
Larry Hillblom was a broke student at the University of California, Berkeley’s
law school, so to pick up a bit of extra cash, he would make courier runs
from San Francisco. Hillblom would often fly packages on the night’s last
flight then return to the Bay Area with more packages.
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After he finished law
school, he decided the courier business was the real racket for him, so
he recruited his pals Adrian Dalsey and Robert Lynn to help him with the
runs. Although they started out making their delivery trips in a single
Plymouth Duster, the company quickly took off, and they named it after
their respective last initials.
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7. 3M
The conglomerate behind
Post-It Notes
gets its name from
its roots as a company that mined stone to make grinding wheels. Since
it was located in Two Harbors, MN, the company was known as Minnesota Mining
and Manufacturing, which was later shortened to 3M.
Photo from EthiSphere.com |
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| 8. AT&T
No surprises here.
The telecom giant sprang to life in 1885 as American Telephone and Telegraph,
although it’s now legally known as just AT&T.
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9. H&M
The beloved clothing
store began in
Sweden in 1947. Founder
Erling Persson
was only selling
women’s duds, so he
called the store
Hennes—Swedish for
“hers.” Twenty-one
years later, he
bought up a hunting
supplier called
Mauritz Widforss.
After the acquisition, Persson branched out into men’s clothing and began
calling the store Hennes and Mauritz, which eventually became short-
ened to H&M.
Photo from Trend911.com |
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| 10. A&W
Root Beer
Roy Allen opened his
first root beer
stand in Lodi, CA,
in the summer of
1919, and quickly
began expanding to
the surrounding areas.
Within a year
he had partnered
with Frank Wright,
and the pair christened
their flagship product “A&W Root Beer.”
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Photo from WillYouBeMyHero
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11. GEICO
The adorable gecko’s
employer is more formally known as the Government Employees Insurance Company.
Although GEICO has always been a private, standalone company, its name
reflects its original purpose:
Leo Goodwin founded
the company in 1936
to sell insurance
directly to employees
of the federal government. |
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| 12. YKK
The initials you see
on darn near every zipper you own stand for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikigaisha,
which translates into “Yoshida Manufacturing Corporation.”
The company is named
after Tadao Yoshida, who started the zipper concern in Tokyo
in 1934.
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13. P.F.
Chang’s
If you go looking
for Mr. P.F. Chang, you’ll be in for a long search. The Asian dining chain’s
name is actually a composite of the founding restaurateur Paul Fleming’s
initials and a simplification of founding chef Philip Chiang’s last name.
Photo from Scottsdale
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| 14. BJ’s
Wholesale Club
The bulk retailer
is named after Beverly Jean Weich, whose father, Mervyn, helped found the
chain as a spinoff from discount retailer Zayre in 1983.
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15. ING
Group
The banking giant’s
name is an abbreviation of Internationale Nederlanden Groep, or “International
Netherlands Group,” a nod
to the company’s
dutch origins and headquarters. The company’s heavy use of the color orange
in its buildings and promotion is also a shoutout to the Netherlands; orange
is the color of the Dutch royal family dating all the way back to William
of Orange.
Photo from Tom on
6/6/2010 |
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| 16. H&R
Block
Brothers Henry and
Richard Bloch founding the tax preparation firm in Kansas City in 1955.
Their only problem was their last name. The brothers worried that people
would mispronounce their surname as “blotch,” hardly a term you want associated
with your tax return. They decided to sidestep this problem by spelling
the company’s name “Block” instead, so that nobody would miss the solid
hard “k” sound.
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