Nintendo and Wii

Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel. Nintendo eventually developed into a video game company, becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Japan's third most valuable listed company, with a market value of over 85 billion dollars.

According to Nintendo's Touch! Generations website, the name "Nintendo" translated from Japanese to English means "Leave luck to Heaven."

Besides video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team in Seattle, Washington.



The Wii console was known by the code name of "Revolution." The Nintendo Style Guide refers to the console as "simply Wii, not Nintendo Wii", making it the first home console Nintendo has marketed outside of Japan without the company name featured in its trademark.

While "Wiis" is a commonly used pluralization of the console, Nintendo has stated that the official plural form is "Wii systems" or "Wii consoles."

Nintendo's spelling of "Wii" with two lower-case "i" characters is meant to resemble two people standing side by side, representing players gathering together, as well as to represent the Wii Remote and Nunchuk.

The company has given many reasons for this choice of name since the announcement; however, the best known is: “ Wii sounds like 'we', which emphasizes that the console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii ”

Despite Nintendo's justification for the name, some video game developers and members of the press reacted negatively towards the change. They preferred "Revolution" over "Wii" and Forbes expressed fear "that the name would convey a continued sense of 'kidiness'  to the console."  Initially, jokes based on the name appeared on the Internet, since then the name as been accepted.





    

Sneakers and Sports Apparel

Here are three product name origins in the category of companies that produce sneaker shoes and sports apparel .



Nike was the Greek goddess of victory. Wearing these shoes or clothing hopefully rubs off some of that goddess' victory on you.



 
Reebok is a very fast type of African gazelle. The company likes the association with speed.




Adidas takes its corporate name from their German maker, Adi Dassler's name making this one also an eponym.

Soda

      

It's fairly common knowledge that cola soft drinks are derived from the cola nut used for flavoring.

Coca-Cola is still the best known of all colas worldwide. The prototype Coca-Cola recipe was formulated at the Eagle Drug and Chemical Company, a drugstore in Columbus, Georgia by John Pemberton.

This original formulation was a "coca wine" and was marketed as Pemberton's French Wine Cocoa. In 1886, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed prohibition legislation, Pemberton responded by developing Coca-Cola, essentially a non-alcoholic version of French Wine Cola.

As with many modern day beverages, it was earlier sold as a patent medicine at soda fountains (The belief at the time was that carbonated water was good for the health.) with claims that it cured including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence.


 


Pepsi-Cola was another cola drink sold as a cure for dysPEPSia, which is a fancy name for indigestion. dys = poor, and PEPSIa = digestion in Latin. The drink was first made in the 1890s by pharmacist Caleb Bradham in New Bern, North Carolina.

The name most likely comes from the digestive enzyme pepsin and the kola nuts used in the recipe. In 1903, Bradham sold 7,968 gallons of syrup. The next year, Pepsi was sold in six-ounce bottles, and sales increased to 19,848 gallons.



DR PEPPER is a drink that was created in the 1880s by Charles Alderton of Waco, Texas and first served around 1885, and nationally marketed in the United States in 1904.

The inventor mixed together 23 soda fountain ingredients and named his creation after his first employer and promoted it as medicinal as well as good tasting.

There are several theories about the origins of the soft drink's name. One conjecture is that the "pep" refers to pepsin. In 2009, an old ledger book filled with formulas and recipes was discovered at antiques store in Texas and a recipe in the book was titled "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters."

Dr Pepper was marketed as a brain tonic and energizing pick-me-up, so another theory holds that it was named for the pep it supposedly gave to users.

Others believe the drink was named after some real Dr. Pepper.

The period after "Dr" was discarded for stylistic and legibility reasons in the 1950s. Dr Pepper's logo was redesigned and the text in this new logo was slanted. The period made "Dr." look like "Di:". After some debate, the period was removed for good as it might also help remove any medical connotation with the product.

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History