On Company Names

What is it with company names?

At the analyst firm where I most recently spent a lot of time, we engaged with literally thousands of companies, and I found myself bemused (or confused) by more than a few company names that I encountered. marchFIRST? Then for awhile, you had both EnteGreat, Inc., the process manufacturing solutions and system integration company, and En’tegrate Software, until En’tegrate was mercifully acquired by Avanade in 2005. I always found it interesting to track down the supply chain management software company Demand Management if god forbid you were using Google (let the record show that Demand Management, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Logility, can be found at http://www.demandsolutions.com/.

I was reminded of all of this in the past couple of days when an old friend and I caught up after some time, and I learned that they were now working at Watertown, MA-based A123Systems. Where does the company get their name you ask? Their website informs that they take their name from the Hamaker force constant, the formula for which begins with A₁₂₃ and measures “the attractive and repulsive forces between particles at nano dimensions”.

I wish that I could tell you more about the Hamaker force constant, but I can report neither what this has to do with the company’s business of manufacturing lithium ion batteries, or what this has to do with anything else for that matter. I was surely out of school the day they covered the Hamaker force formula, else I would have remembered something like this.

There will be some award for the first person who can help me solve this equation, or the mystery of why companies come up with names that require explanation in every company announcement, reference, and mention. Perhaps part of the answer lies in teasing you to find out more about the company, as indeed I do intend to learn more about A123Systems.

In the meantime, what other interesting or mysterious company names have you seen? Please share them with me, together with an interesting fact or two, if you can, about the company.

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