List of company name etymologies (W,X,Y,Z)

Hey there, here we are presenting List of company name etymologies (W,X,Y,Z) for preparation of biz and tech quizzes.

W

Wachovia – from the Latin version of the German wachau, the name given to a region in North Carolina by German settlers because it reminded them of a river near their home in Germany. Many companies founded in or around Charlotte, North Carolina have Wachovia in their name.[citation needed]

Waitrose – upmarket UK supermarket chain originally named after the founders, Wallace Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor. The Taylor was later dropped.

Walgreens – named after founder Charles R. Walgreen, Sr.

Wal-Mart – named after founder Sam Walton

Wang Laboratories – from the name of the founder, An Wang, the inventor of core memory.

Wells Fargo – From the founders of the original Wells Fargo company, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo. (When Norwest purchased Wells Fargo in 1998, it chose to retain the Wells Fargo name.)

Wendy's – Wendy was the nickname of founder Dave Thomas' daughter Melinda.

Weta Digital – special effects company co-founded by The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. 'Weta' are a group of about 70 species of insect found in New Zealand, where Weta Digital is based.

W H Smith – founded by Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna in London, England, in 1792. They named their small newsagent's shop after their son William Henry Smith, who was born the same year.

Williams-Sonoma – founded by Chuck Williams in Sonoma, California.

Wipro – from Western India Palm Refined Oil Ltd Wipro Technologies. The company started as a modest Vanaspati and laundry soap producer and is now also an IT services giant.

Wonderware – Wonderware was the project code name for the company prior to its launch. Upon making the company a legal entity, the code name was retained as the company name.

Worlds of Wonder – founder Don Kingsborough wanted an eyecatching stock symbol, and Worlds of Wonder provided WOW. The company went bankrupt in 1988.

WPP – global advertising and marketing company founded by Martin Sorrell in 1985. He bought an existing listed company, Wire & Plastic Products PLC, to use as a shell.

WWE – From the company's legal name of World Wrestling Entertainment, adopted in 2002; it began using the initialism as its trading name in 2011. The previous name of World Wrestling Federation (WWF), used since 1979, was changed after a court case brought by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which is now called the World Wide Fund for Nature.

X

Xerox – named from xerography, a word derived from the Greek xeros (dry) and graphos (writing). The company was founded as The Haloid Company in 1906, launched its first XeroX copier in 1949, and changed its name to Haloid Xerox in 1958.

XIX Entertainment – XIX is 19 in Roman numerals, so the company is named indirectly after Paul Hardcastle's single 19, and directly derived from 19 Entertainment.

Xobni – inbox, backwards

XTO Energy – Founded in 1986 as Cross Timbers Oil Company, it went public under the stock ticker XTO, and changed its name to XTO Energy Inc in 2001. It is now owned by Exxon Mobil.

Y

Yahoo! – The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang jokingly considered themselves yahoos. It's also an interjection sometimes associated with United States Southerners' and Westerners' expression of joy, as alluded to in Yahoo.com commercials that end with someone singing the word "yahoo". It is also sometime jokingly referred to by its backronym, Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.

YKK – zipper manufacturer named from Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha (Yoshida Company Limited) after the founder, Tadao Yoshida. The letters YKK were stamped onto the zippers' pull tabs.

Yakult – Official claims state that the name is derived from jahurto, an older form of jogurto, the Esperanto word for "yogurt". However, it has also been claimed that the name is derived from the fact that the product was developed from ancient Mongolian practices of culturing yak's milk in a sack made from a yak's stomach – the combination of Yak and Culture in English giving the product name as "Yakult".

Yamaha – after Torakusu Yamaha, who founded the company as Nippon Gakki Seizō Kabushiki Gaisha (Japan Musical Instrument Manufacturing Corporation) in 1897 after repairing a reed organ. The official name was changed to Yamaha Corporation on 1 October 1987.

Yoplait – from the merger of Yola and Coplait in 1965.

Z

Zamzar – Based on the main character Gregor Samsa (Gregor Samsa) from Franz Kafka's story The Metamorphosis. Kafka describes a young man who is transformed whilst sleeping into a monstrous verminous bug. A version of the man's name was used as the basis for the company name because of its powerful association with change and transformation.

Zend Technologies – a contraction derived from the names of Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, the two founders.

Zero Corporation – Founded by Herman Zierold as Zierold Metal Corporation, it is the parent company of Zero Halliburton. In 1952, when then owner Jack Gilbert noticed that many of the company's customers mispronounced and misspelled "Zierold" as "Zero," he changed the name of the company to Zero Manufacturing.

Zimmer – named after Justin O. Zimmer, who co-founded the medical equipment company in Warsaw, Indiana, in 1927.

Zuse – pioneering German computer company named after its founder, Konrad Zuse (1910–1995). He built his first computer in his parents' living room at the end of the 1930s. Zuse was taken over by Siemens AG. The name is now supposedly echoed by SuSE (Software und System-Entwicklung: "Software and system development").

Zynga – Named after founder Mark Pincus's American bulldog, Zinga.