How cell phones got their names

24.07.2013
Every day we are coming across famous and not really known brand names of mobile phones and their manufacturers. The commercials of new phones, smartphones and other communication devices are everywhere. Nowadays even little kids know what are Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Motorola, Siemens, BlackBerry and other mobile phones manufacturers. But have you ever asked yourself what do these names mean or how your phone's brand translates into your language? Today we are going to learn how different brand names appeared and what do they actually mean. Not to offend any of these names, we will go in alphabetical order.

Lets start with Taiwanese company called Acer. Its name comes from Latin and means "sharp, vigilant, agile", you may agree that this is pretty worthy name. But there is another variant of translation - "maple".

Acer Logo

The meaning of the famous brand Apple is obviously an apple, as a fruit. Everyone may guess it regardless of knowing English or not, just look at the company's logo. But there are different stories of the name's origins. The first one states that the company founders were not able to think out the name for their business, and then emphatic Steve Jobs delivered an ultimatum - "I will name the company 'Apple' if you not come up with anything else till 5 o'clock". The other story says that Steve Jobs offered such a name because Apple's phone number would appear before Atari's in phone book. And the last version says that Apple was the first company that decided to recycle old component parts for the new ones, without throwing anything away. In that case produced computers would be considered as ecologically clean.

Apple Logo

The next company - ASUS was founded in Taiwan islands by four former engineers. The company's name comes from English "pegasus" (winged horse in Greek mythology), but for having a top position in alphabetical order it was decided to take the first three letters off and it came out as ASUS. The other version of its name origin says that ASUS in Chinese language means "Big China" or "big nation of China". But there is also a third story, and it gives one more version of translation - "AS US" what obviously means 'as us' (lets be with us). Chinese people are lucky - translate as you wish, not a lot of people would doubt Chinese language.

ASUS Logo

And one more Taiwanese company - BenQ. This is a short version, the full one is 'Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to life'.

Ericsson got their name pretty simple, it goes for their founder - Lars Magnus Ericsson.

Everybody who speaks English or learned it at school probably laughed when the first time heard trade mark name of the British company Meridian Group - Fly. The name surely comes to the head more as a 'fly' - an insect, but not as the matter of 'flying'. Somebody was very imaginative to name the phone "Fly", or just had a good sense of humor.

LG — the name of this Korean brand formed out of two known in the past brands - Lucky and GoldStar. There are also some websites that offering alternative version of these abbreviations - 'Life is Good'.

 LG Logo

Earlier this company was manufacturing radio-recorders for the cars, and then started to produce mobile phones. American company Motorola got its name from combination of two words - 'motor' and a suffix '-ola', where the second one was pretty popular back in the day and was used in the names of some technology products, like Victrola.

Motorola Logo

MTS — the name of this Russian manufacturer and also a mobile network provider formed out of Mobile TeleSystem.

Nokia started its history in Finnish town called Nokia, which was named after Nokianvirta, the river the town was build on.

Nokia Logo

With Siemens everything is pretty much simple, the name comes from its German founder - Werner von Siemens.

Siemens Logo

Qtek - this brand name was specially created by HTC company for the promotion of their products on the market under their own title. The name probably comes from 'quality technologies'.

March 1st of 1938, Lee Byung-chul from Korea, founded his company called Samsung. So many things were engaged in the processes of Samsung company back in the time - textile factory, sugar-refinery, insurance business. And only after Korean war, Samsung took a course into electronics. The name of the company translates from Korean language as 'three stars' and probably denotes three sons that the founder had.

Samsung Logo

Philips - the company owned by Dutch Royal Philips Electronics. The brand's name Philips comes from the name of the founder - Frederick Philips.

Sony — the name of this Japanese manufacturer comes from Latin word "sonus" - that means 'sound' and from the word «sonny», that means 'gilded guy' (like from the gilded youth).

Sony Logo

So we learned how the names of world's brands and mobile manufacturers occurred. Now we offer you a couple of mobile brand names with pretty amusing meanings or translations. Probably everybody knows the series of flashy smartphones - BlackBerry Bold. The name talks for itself as without a doubt, means a solid and bold price of this phone.

BlackBerry Logo

One more yummy mobile phone name from LG company, back in 2010 - Cookie. Despite its amusing name, in some other countries it was for some reason changed to tasteless 'KP500'.

Lumia - widely known range of smartphones, created by Finnish company Nokia and translates as 'snow'. But for some reason it is not coinciding with its bright and colored phone housing. Finnish people probably have their own idea what the snow is and how it looks like. As we may see, every company at any cost, tries to emphasize their product among the huge number of devices existing on the world's market. Somebody got it right, somebody not. But despite everything, today we have companies and corporations, that confidently and step-by-step take the humanity by the path of technical progress and their names simply inspiring.

Nokia Lumia Logo

All-Spares Online Store, wishes you that your smartphone would be the same unique and we will always supply you with the needed spares for them.
All rights reserved. This material from all-spares.com web site may not be published, rewritten or redistributed in whole or part without authorship indicated and backlinks provided.
Chat with us
English Offline Español Online Русский Offline Português Offline
Sales chat
 English offline
 Español online
 Русский offline
 Português offline
Contacts
Phone:
Email:
Compare
No items in compare list
Sales chat
Contacts
Compare