Five Famous Name Origins

Wendy’s: The first “Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers” was opened on November 15, 1969; the restaurant being named after the fourth child, Melinda Lou Thomas, of founder Dave Thomas (who incidentally was a high school dropout and before founding Wendy’s helped stop Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) from going out of business.) You might be asking yourself, “How do you get ‘Wendy’ out of Melinda Lou Thomas?” This was a nickname given to her as she couldn’t pronounce her own name when she was young, instead she would say “Wenda”, which is how she got the nickname “Wendy”.

Arby’s: Although some people believe that the enunciation of Arby’s stands for “roast beef”, this isn’t true. It actually comes from the initials of its founders, the Raffel Brothers (R.B.’s). They originally planned to name their company “Big Tex”, but someone already owned the rights to that name.

eBay: The company was originally supposed to be “Echo Bay Technology Group”, but the domain “EchoBay.com” was already taken, so they shortened it and got eBay.com, which was available.

Starbucks: Not many companies dive into the world of fiction literature to find inspiration for their brand, but Starbucks is not just any company. Its name comes from a character in the story of Moby Dick.

Nintendo: This famous company name comes from the Japanese name “Nintendou”. Roughly translated “Nin” means “entrusted” and “ten-dou” means “heaven”, so basically “leave luck to heaven”. If this seems a strange name/slogan for a company, perhaps it’s important to note it started out as a playing card making company in 1889.