Yahoo! The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos. 格列佛游记》的作者Jonathan Swift发明了yahoo这个单词。在小说里，它代表了一个在外表和行为举止上都令人厌恶的家伙，简直都不能算是一个人。Yahoo! 的创始人杨致远和David Filo选择这个名字的原因是他们觉得自己是yahoo。 另一种说法，Yahoo是“Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”的首字母缩写，不过David Filo和杨致远坚持他们选择这个名称的原因是他们喜欢字典里对yahoo的定义：“粗鲁，不通世故，粗俗。” Xerox The Greek root "xer" means dry. The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product Xerox as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying. xer是希腊文字根，代表“干”。由于Chestor Carlson发明的产品是干式复印，和当时占优势的湿法复印有显著的差别，所以他用Xerox命名。 Sun Microsystems Founded by four Stanford University buddies, Sun is the acronym for Stanford University Network. 由斯坦福大学的四个家伙创建。SUN 是“Stanford University Network”的首字母缩写。 Sony From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster. 来自sonus和sonny的组合。sonus是拉丁词，代表声音。sonny是美国俚语，用来称呼聪明伶俐的少年。 Sony "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by four ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM. 代表“Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing”。四个IBM的前雇员组建了SAP。他们为IBM工作时属于的部门叫“Systems/Applications/Projects”。 Red Hat Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone! 公司创始人Marc Ewing念大学的时候，他祖父给了他一顶康奈尔曲棍球队的帽子，上面有着红色和白色的条纹。他不小心把帽子弄丢了，很希望找回来。红帽子Linux beta版的用户手册里面有一段话，央求用户如果找到了他的红帽子，请归还！ Oracle Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). Larry Ellison和Bob Oats曾经为美国中央情报局（CIA）的一个咨询项目工作。这个项目的代号就叫Oracle（中文意思是神谕，圣贤。CIA希望这个系统能够解决一切问题，故如此命名）。 Motorola Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola. 创始人Paul Galvin是在公司开始生产车用无线电的时候让公司叫现在这个名字的。原先它叫Victrola。 Microsoft It was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on. Bill Gate起了这个名字。表示公司将专注于MICROcomputer SOFTware（微型计算机软件），原来叫做Micro-Soft，后来把中间的“-”去掉了。 Lotus Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from the lotus position or 'padmasana.' Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Intel Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics. Hewlett-Packard Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett. Hotmail Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casings. Google The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google Cisco The name is not an acronym but an abbreviation of San Francisco. The company's logo reflects its San Francisco name heritage. It represents a stylized Golden Gate Bridge. Apple Computers Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock. Apache It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server - thus, the name Apache. Adobe The name came from the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.