Sony may today seem to be a very short and easy to pronounce brand name, but it wasn't when the company was set up. The Japanese technology poineer was, in fact, established by the name of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Corporation back in May 1946.
Quite like Sony, there are many such tech majors that had an altogether different brand name when they began their operations years ago, but later opted for a different corporate name. We have complied a list of such tech companies with birth names you no longer can associate them with.
1. Sony
The Sony name was created by combining "Sonus," the original Latin for "Sonic," meaning sound, with "Sonny," denoting small size, or a youthful boy. The name was chosen for its simple pronunciation that is the same in any language.
This dates back to March 1955 when Sony co-founder Morita planned a trip to the US and Canada to conduct market surveys and business discussions. He was to take the company's new radio as a sample. Before he left on his trip to North America, it was decided to label all Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Totsuko) products with the Sony brand name. This is because of the fear that Americans could not pronounce either Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo or Totsuko. It was no use pushing a product with an unpronounceable name. And therefore, they wanted a simple name that was easy to read, remember and pronounce in any language.
The company decided to opt for a two-letter name hoping that it would be the simplest, but in the Romanised alphabet this was next to impossible. They then moved to three letters. But there were many three-letter company names already, such as RCA, NBC, CBS and NHK. This could have become confusing. Then they thought of taking the initials of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo and calling themselves TTK, but that was too similar to the TKK adopted by railway company Tokyo Kyuko. That left the possibility of using four letters, and here they tried all sorts of combinations. The crux of the problem was pronounceability. "Sony" was the name they finally arrived at by this process.
Three years had passed since the Sony label was first applied on Totsuko products in 1955. And finally, January 1958 signalled a new departure for Totsuko as it adopted Sony as its corporate name.
2. Motorola
What is today known as Motorola was initially set up by the name of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in September, 1928. While its first product was a battery eliminator in the same year, it was in 1930, when Galvin Manufacturing Corporation introduced the Motorola radio, one of the first commercially successful car radios. Company founder Paul V Galvin created the brand name Motorola for the car radio - linking "motor" (for motorcar) with "ola" (which implied sound). Thus the Motorola brand meant sound in motion. But the name of the company wasn't changed to Motorola until 1947. And in 1947 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation was renamed Motorola, Inc. After a bried period of Google control, the company is now owned by Lenovo.
3. LG
Goldstar, better known today as LG, made its mark in the world as Korea's first electronics manufacturer in 1958. It was on January 1, 1995, when the names GoldStar and Lucky were combined and gave way to LG Electronics. And with the new name came a new symbol.
4. Lenovo
With the aim to expand into the overseas market, Beijing-based Legend Group, on April 28, 2003, changed its English brand name from Legend to Lenovo ('Le' stood for the original name 'Legend' and 'novo' means 'new' in Latin). It was however, in April 2004, when the company announced the official change of its English company name to Lenovo Group Limited. The idea behind the switch was to use it without restriction in any part of the world.
5. Dell
PC's Limited changed its name to Dell Computer Corp and went public in 1988 - four years after it came into existence. It was in 1984, when the company was set up by Michael Dell, a 19-year-old, pre-med college freshman who started selling computers built from stock components out of his dorm room at the University of Texas in Austin. He later dropped out to focus on the business he named PC's Limited, which was later renamed Dell.
6. eBay
What is today know as eBay was actually launched as AuctionWeb. Back in September 1995, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launched AuctionWeb, a site, as the company explains, "dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace." The company's first ever sale on AuctionWeb was a broken laser pointer. It was sold to a laser pointer collector for $14.83. In September 1997, AuctionWeb was officially renamed eBay.
7. Nintendo
Nintendo was earlier known by the name of Marufuku Co Ltd. It was in 1951, when the name of the company was changed to Nintendo Playing Card Co Ltd.
8. Yahoo
Yahoo was first christened with the multi-syllabic "Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web" - which was basically a directory of interesting sites on the World Wide Web. It was named after co-founder Jerry Yang. The name was changed to the aspirational Yahoo on March 1, 1995.
9. BlackBerry
In January 2013, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) took a much-awaited move and changed the company's name to BlackBerry. The name change happened for a streamlined identity. BlackBerry was how the company was known pretty much everywhere across the world other than North America, so the company decided to have an iconic global brand. And they already had a powerful brand at hand, which they made it central. The switch underscored the close attention the company paid to marketing as it embarked on a make-or-break drive to regain lost ground in the smartphone market it once dominated.
10. Canon
Canon was originally established in 1937 as Precision Optical Industry. The Precision Optical Industry Co Ltd, changed its name to Canon Camera Co Ltd on September 15, 1947. The decision was made to respond to the comments by camera-loving personnel in the Occupation Forces that it was very confusing to identify Canon for cameras, Serenar for lenses, and Precision Optical Industry Co Ltd for the manufacturer of these products. After the change of corporate name, the single unified company name, Canon was used for the trademarks of cameras and lenses. This meant the rebirth of the camera manufacturer with the worldwide market in view.
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