Company Name Quiz

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1. What company was previously know as:

a. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing?
b. Nichon Sangio ("Japanese Industry" )?
c. Nippon Kogaku ("Japanese Optical" )?
d. Standard Oil of New Jersey?
e. The National Biscuit Company?
f. Toyeda?

How was Microsoft originally spelled?

2. What company is named for:

a. a Japanese mountain?
b. San Francisco, CA?
c. Santa Cruz, CA?
d. a university network?
e. a race of brutes in "Gulliver's Travels"?
f. the Pleiades?
g. a Cornell lacrosse cap?
h. a Finnish city?
i. the Buddhist god of mercy?
j. NCSA's httpd daemon (a patchy server)
k. a yoga position

3. What company was almost named 'Moore Noyce', but that name was
already trademarked by a hotel chain? What company might now be
called Packard-Hewlett, if a coin had flipped differnetly?
(I don't know if the toss was heads or tails).

4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?

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In article <ckh3e2$1p2$1@news1.radix.net>, tomcatpolka@NyOaShPoAoM.com says...
> 1. What company was previously know as:
>
> a. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing?

3M

> b. Nichon Sangio ("Japanese Industry" )?

Sony?

> c. Nippon Kogaku ("Japanese Optical" )?
> d. Standard Oil of New Jersey?

Esso

> e. The National Biscuit Company?

Nabisco

> f. Toyeda?

Toyota?

>
> How was Microsoft originally spelled?
>
> 2. What company is named for:
>
> a. a Japanese mountain?

Fuji

> b. San Francisco, CA?
> c. Santa Cruz, CA?
> d. a university network?
> e. a race of brutes in "Gulliver's Travels"?

Yahoo!

> f. the Pleiades?
> g. a Cornell lacrosse cap?
> h. a Finnish city?

Nokia?

> i. the Buddhist god of mercy?
> j. NCSA's httpd daemon (a patchy server)

Thanks for the clue, Apache.

> k. a yoga position
>
> 3. What company was almost named 'Moore Noyce', but that name was
> already trademarked by a hotel chain? What company might now be
> called Packard-Hewlett, if a coin had flipped differnetly?
> (I don't know if the toss was heads or tails).

I have no idea.

> 4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?

Mitsubishi

--
Go to http://MarcDashevsky.com to send me e-mail.

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"Jim Ward" <tomcatpolka@NyOaShPoAoM.com> wrote in message
news:ckh3e2$1p2$1@news1.radix.net...
> 1. What company was previously know as:
>
> a. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing?

3M

> b. Nichon Sangio ("Japanese Industry" )?

Nissan

> c. Nippon Kogaku ("Japanese Optical" )?
> d. Standard Oil of New Jersey?

Exxon

> e. The National Biscuit Company?

Nabisco, now part of RJR Nabisco

> f. Toyeda?
>
> How was Microsoft originally spelled?

with a hyphen

>
> 2. What company is named for:
>
> a. a Japanese mountain?

Fuji

> b. San Francisco, CA?
> c. Santa Cruz, CA?

SCO

> d. a university network?

S(tanford) U(niversity) N(etwork)

> e. a race of brutes in "Gulliver's Travels"?
> f. the Pleiades?
> g. a Cornell lacrosse cap?
> h. a Finnish city?
> i. the Buddhist god of mercy?
> j. NCSA's httpd daemon (a patchy server)
> k. a yoga position

Lotus, now part of IBM

>
> 3. What company was almost named 'Moore Noyce', but that name was
> already trademarked by a hotel chain? What company might now be
> called Packard-Hewlett, if a coin had flipped differnetly?
> (I don't know if the toss was heads or tails).

Intel; H-P

>
> 4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?

Mitsubishi

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| Steve Grant wrote:
|> Jim Ward wrote:
|> 1. What company was previously know as:

----[----snipped-----]----

|> 4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?

| Mitsubishi

Well, a story I heard that the word "Mitsubishi" actually means
"three pebbles", but "three diamonds" looks and sounds much
cooler for a car. Although, there are a LOT of references citing
that it means "three diamonds". Perhaps someone with a good
English-Japenese dictionary could shed some light here. ____ Gerard S.

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On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, Richard Schultz wrote:
> Arthur J. O'Dwyer <ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> :> 2. What company is named for:
> :> e. a race of brutes in "Gulliver's Travels"?
> : Yahoo!
>
> Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that Yahoo! got its
> name as a joking reference to the nerdspeak "YA" for "Yet Another" as
> in "YACC" (Yet Another Compiler Compiler).

You know, I think I have heard that before. I have no idea whether it's
true, and in any event I wouldn't know what "HOO" could possibly stand
for. I wouldn't be surprised to find a dot-com startup named "Yawp,"
though.

Nevertheless, the Yahoos were definitely the Gulliver's Travels brutes
referred to in the question. I suspect that both Swift's Yahoos and the
web portal Yahoo! were named after the exclamation "Yahoo!", rather than
the one after the other as Jim suggested, but whatever. It's the intended
answer.

-Arthur

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Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, Richard Schultz wrote:
>> Arthur J. O'Dwyer <ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> :> 2. What company is named for:
>> :> e. a race of brutes in "Gulliver's Travels"?
>> : Yahoo!
>>
>> Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that Yahoo! got its
>> name as a joking reference to the nerdspeak "YA" for "Yet Another" as
>> in "YACC" (Yet Another Compiler Compiler).
>
> You know, I think I have heard that before. I have no idea whether
> it's true, and in any event I wouldn't know what "HOO" could possibly
> stand for. I wouldn't be surprised to find a dot-com startup named
> "Yawp," though.

Yet Another Hierarchically Officious Oracle (there's another, too, but I
forget what), but . . .

> Nevertheless, the Yahoos were definitely the Gulliver's Travels
> brutes referred to in the question. I suspect that both Swift's
> Yahoos and the web portal Yahoo! were named after the exclamation
> "Yahoo!", rather than the one after the other as Jim suggested, but
> whatever. It's the intended
> answer.

.. . . it's almost certainly a backcronym, coined by the founders because
all computer projects have to have an acronym, even ones with a nice
simple name like Yahoo

--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/
"If I knew I'd live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."
- Mickey Mantle

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In rec.games.trivia Keith Willoughby <keith@flat222.org> wrote:

: . . . it's almost certainly a backcronym, coined by the founders because
: all computer projects have to have an acronym, even ones with a nice
: simple name like Yahoo

As I heard the story, they decided that whatever name they used would
*start* with the letters "YA"; you're probably right that they came up with
the words only after deciding on "Yahoo."

-----
Richard Schultz schultr@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad."

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Somebody claiming to be "gerard46" <gerard46@rtt.net> wrote in
news:99Wad.307$Iq6.12913@news7.onvoy.net:

>|> 4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?
>
>| Mitsubishi
>
> Well, a story I heard that the word "Mitsubishi" actually means
> "three pebbles", but "three diamonds" looks and sounds much
> cooler for a car. Although, there are a LOT of references citing
> that it means "three diamonds".

Mitsubishi themselves had an ad campaign in the late 80s here in the US
with the tag line, "Mitusbishi. The name means 'three diamonds'."

--
Ted <fedya at bestweb dot net>
Barney: Hey, Homer, you're late for English.
Homer: Who needs English? I'm never going to England.
<http://www.snpp.com/episodes/7F12.html>

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David wrote:
) "Ted S." <fedya@bestweb.spam> writes:
)>
)> Mitsubishi themselves had an ad campaign in the late 80s here in the US
)> with the tag line, "Mitusbishi. The name means 'three diamonds'."
)
) I'm not doubting that they did, I just don't understand
) how it can be so. Granted I don't know much japanese,
) but I can count in it and the only number I see in
) Mitusbishi is 4 (shi), unless the rest of the text means
) 1 diamond less than, then I think some marketers just
) liked the arrangement of 3 diamonds instead of 4 .
)
) As always any opinions I may have written above are mine and mine alone.

I don't know much about japanese, but I do know they have many different
words for counting, depending on what it is exactly that is being counted.


SaSW, Willem
--
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT

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In article <ckj6l9$lu8$1@srv38.cas.org>, David K. Lewis <dkl24@cas.org> wrote:
>"Ted S." <fedya@bestweb.spam> writes:
>>
>> Mitsubishi themselves had an ad campaign in the late 80s here in the US
>> with the tag line, "Mitusbishi. The name means 'three diamonds'."
>
>I'm not doubting that they did, I just don't understand
>how it can be so. Granted I don't know much japanese,
>but I can count in it and the only number I see in
>Mitusbishi is 4 (shi), unless the rest of the text means
>1 diamond less than, then I think some marketers just
>liked the arrangement of 3 diamonds instead of 4 .

"Mitsu" is also "three", a version that doesn't need a "counter",
which is a concept that (from what little I know about it) is
thankfully absent in English.

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russotto@grace.speakeasy.net (Matthew Russotto) writes:

> In article <ckj6l9$lu8$1@srv38.cas.org>, David K. Lewis <dkl24@cas.org> wrote:
> >"Ted S." <fedya@bestweb.spam> writes:
> >>
> >> Mitsubishi themselves had an ad campaign in the late 80s here in the US
> >> with the tag line, "Mitusbishi. The name means 'three diamonds'."
> >
> >I'm not doubting that they did, I just don't understand
> >how it can be so. Granted I don't know much japanese,
> >but I can count in it and the only number I see in
> >Mitusbishi is 4 (shi), unless the rest of the text means
> >1 diamond less than, then I think some marketers just
> >liked the arrangement of 3 diamonds instead of 4 .
>
> "Mitsu" is also "three", a version that doesn't need a "counter",
> which is a concept that (from what little I know about it) is
> thankfully absent in English.

Not directly, but it's not an entirely alien concept:

3 flat-thing-counter paper <=> 3 sheets of paper
not 3 papers

Phil
--
They no longer do my traditional winks tournament lunch - liver and bacon.
It's just what you need during a winks tournament lunchtime to replace lost
.... liver. -- Anthony Horton, 2004/08/27 at the Cambridge 'Long Vac.'

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Jim Ward <tomcatpolka@NyOaShPoAoM.com> wrote in message news:<ckh3e2$1p2$1@news1.radix.net>...

> 3. What company was almost named 'Moore Noyce', but that name was
> already trademarked by a hotel chain?


Intel

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On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 13:22:03 -0400 (EDT), "Arthur J. O'Dwyer"
<ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

>> 4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?
>
> The other one of Sanyo or Sanrio?

Wrong "three".

Cheers - Ian

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On 13 Oct 2004 12:22:01 GMT, dkl24@cas.org (David K. Lewis) wrote:

>"Ted S." <fedya@bestweb.spam> writes:
>>
>> Mitsubishi themselves had an ad campaign in the late 80s here in the US
>> with the tag line, "Mitusbishi. The name means 'three diamonds'."
>
>I'm not doubting that they did, I just don't understand
>how it can be so. Granted I don't know much japanese,
>but I can count in it and the only number I see in
>Mitusbishi is 4 (shi)


Good grief - I actually know this one. Who said I never learned
anything at night class? (I think it was my teacher, actually.)
Anyway - to get seriously pretentious...


First, the numbers. As with almost all everything else in the
language, Japanese has two ways of saying these - one they picked up
from the Chinese along with their writing system, and an older, native
one.

The system you've learned (ichi, ni, san, shi...) is the Chinese one.
It's used with "counter" words (such as "hon" for long, thin things -
so "Three beers, please" can be "Biiru o san-bon kudasai" - "hon"
because beer comes in bottles, which are mostly long and thin, and
"bon" instead of "hon" because it's easier to say). There are
*dozens* of different counters.

The native system (hito-, futa-, mi-, yo- ...) is used for small
numbers used on their own (and only up to ten). "Things" get the
ending "-tsu" (hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu...). So "Three,
please" could be "Mittsu kudasai".


So - the "three" in "mitsubishi" is "mitsu". The second half of the
name is "hishi" (with the same sound change as "hon", above, and for
the same sort of reason). As someone else has already dug out, it
does indeed mean "water chestnut". For anyone who wants to check the
Japanese for themselves, go to Jim Breen's WWWJDIC server,
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html
Select "Find Kanji in the database". Then choose "JIS code (hex)"
from the Select Type pulldown, enter "4929" in the Keyword box, and
click on "select kanji". ("Mitsu" is JIS "3b30".)

Cheers - Ian

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On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 23:34:54 GMT, "gerard46" <gerard46@rtt.net> wrote:

>| Alan Sagan wrote:
>| Go to Mitsubishi's website and they will answer your question. It does
>| mean 3 little diamonds.
>|
>| http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/mitsstory.html
>
>What a surprise!! It was (as I heard it) Mitsubishi's (marketing
>people) idea to ... ah, change the "meaning" of the word from
>pebbles to diamonds.
>
>As I said earlier, three diamonds sounds much better than three
>pebbles. Of course they would say that. What is most important
>is what the word Mitsubishi meant before "they" wanted it to mean
>three diamonds. I would like another reference besides the people
>who supposedly "re-defined" the word. _____________________Gerard S.

I've plugged Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Japanese web dictionary elsewhere in
this thread:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html
(Jim is an associate professor at Monash university in Australia, and
the source of some serious invaluable stuff for anyone wanting to use
Japanese on the net.)

Try looking up "mitsubishi" and "hishigata" using the dictionary
search for Japanese words, and look at the way the two words are
written. The "three" in "mitsubishi" is obvious - the other character
is "water chestnut", and is the first character of "hishigata".

Cheers - Ian

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In article <Xns9580BC544FC8E8jUwe9053kODf78sfkj0@127.0.0.1>, fedya@bestweb.spam says...
> Somebody claiming to be "gerard46" <gerard46@rtt.net> wrote in
> news:99Wad.307$Iq6.12913@news7.onvoy.net:
>
> >|> 4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?
> >
> >| Mitsubishi
> >
> > Well, a story I heard that the word "Mitsubishi" actually means
> > "three pebbles", but "three diamonds" looks and sounds much
> > cooler for a car. Although, there are a LOT of references citing
> > that it means "three diamonds".
>
> Mitsubishi themselves had an ad campaign in the late 80s here in the US
> with the tag line, "Mitusbishi. The name means 'three diamonds'."

I just purchased some cans of Three Diamond tuna. Any chance
they're from Mitsubishi?

--
Go to http://MarcDashevsky.com to send me e-mail.

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Ian Noble <fredd@clara.co.uk> wrote in message news:<d5stm0h59tlssdb0oqa7uqpv488equh9q1@4ax.com>...
> On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:20:53 -0500, russotto@grace.speakeasy.net
> (Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>
> >In article <yYibd.363$Iq6.13899@news7.onvoy.net>,
> >gerard46 <gerard46@rrt.net> wrote:
> >>| Alan Sagan wrote:
> >>| Go to Mitsubishi's website and they will answer your question. It does
> >>| mean 3 little diamonds.
> >>|
> >>| http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/mitsstory.html
> >>
> >>What a surprise!! It was (as I heard it) Mitsubishi's (marketing
> >>people) idea to ... ah, change the "meaning" of the word from
> >>pebbles to diamonds.
> >
> >Best as I can tell, "bishi" has nothing to do with crystalline
> >carbon, but rather the diamond _shape_.
> Right. According to my small Collins dictionary, the word for the
> *stone* nowadays is "daiyamondo" or just "daiya" (I found an older
> term, "kongouseki" ). "Daiya" is used for the card suit too, just to
> be confusing.
Maybe because Mitsubishi's website is run by marketers there shouldn't
be an confusion:-) .
Alan

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In rec.puzzles Arthur J. O'Dwyer <ajo@nospam.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Nevertheless, the Yahoos were definitely the Gulliver's Travels brutes
> referred to in the question. I suspect that both Swift's Yahoos and the
> web portal Yahoo! were named after the exclamation "Yahoo!", rather than
> the one after the other as Jim suggested, but whatever. It's the intended
> answer.

I took the answers from http://www.fact-index.com/l/li/lis [...] ogies.html
which comes from the Wikipedia. They say:

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. However, Yahoo! today claims a sort of backformed acronym -- Yet
Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.

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In rec.puzzles Marc Dashevsky <usenet@marcdashevsky.com> wrote:
>> d. Standard Oil of New Jersey?

> Esso

Also Exxon, now ExxonMobil.

>> e. The National Biscuit Company?

> Nabisco

Yep.

>> j. NCSA's httpd daemon (a patchy server)

> Thanks for the clue, Apache.

Yep.

>> 4. What company name means "three diamonds" in Japanese?

> Mitsubishi

Yep. Other more obscure ones:

Daewoo - "Great Universe" in Korean.
Hitachi - "Sunrise" in Japanese.
Hyundai - "Present Time" in Korean.
Sanyo - "Three Oceans" in Chinese (says disputed).

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In rec.puzzles Robert Israel <israel@math.ubc.ca> wrote:

>>2. What company is named for:

>> b. San Francisco, CA?

> Cisco

Yes. One of my cow-orkers suggested Rice-a-Roni, but
that was named for Rice and Macaroni.

>> g. a Cornell lacrosse cap?

> Red Hat

The webpage says:

Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with
red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. People would turn
to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as 'that guy in the
red hat'. He lost the cap 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.

>> i. the Buddhist god of mercy?

> Canon

The webpage says the spelling was changed from Kwanon to Canon to
avoid offending religious groups.

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In rec.puzzles Jim Ward <tomcatpolka@nyoashpoaom.com> wrote:

> Named after the company founder Sakichi Toyoda.
> Honda is named for Soichiro Honda.
> Kawasaki is named for Shozo Kawasaki.

Also add Michio Suzuki.

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While stranded on the hard shoulder of the information super highway tomcatpolka@NyOaShPoAoM.com typed:
>
> Yep. Other more obscure ones:
>
> Daewoo - "Great Universe" in Korean.
> Hitachi - "Sunrise" in Japanese.
> Hyundai - "Present Time" in Korean.
> Sanyo - "Three Oceans" in Chinese (says disputed).

Triumph Speed Twin - "oil leak" in Olde English

--
Trog Woolley | trog at trogwoolley dot com
(A Croweater back residing in Pommie Land with Linux)
Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna