> Amazon: "plenty", does "things that scale".

Looking at form of the other entries, it appears that the author claims that the word "Amazon" means "plenty".

In my dictionary, it means "no boobs", which might imply that the company would do everything except porn.

For anyone wondering, Google says:

"late Middle English: via Latin from Greek Amazōn, explained by the Greeks as ‘without a breast’ (as if from a- ‘without’ + mazos ‘breast’), referring to the fable that the Amazons cut off the right breast so as not to interfere with the use of a bow, but probably a folk etymology of an unknown foreign word."

They matter incredibly, just not for the criteria which OP believes makes a good name. Naming isn't logical. No one cares if the name perfectly represents what your company is and does. But it damn well better sound good and be memorable. In a society so focused on images and status a good name could be the difference between success and failure. (depending on the type of product)

I didn't mean the names matter in themselves but that original visions matter and names actually tend to reflect them.

Best sounding company name in my ears: Motorola

For an acronym IBM is sounding surprisingly well.

"Microsoft: stands for "microprocessor software". Still the dominant software vendor for descendants of the original microprocessor. Never made commercially successful hardware."

Do you not count the xbox 360?

It's definitely a success, but:

* Its success would not save Microsoft if Windows and Office usage sharply declines

* Nor would its failure ever break Microsoft

* ...both of which resulting from the market being not very large by Microsoft's standards

* I'm not so sure about this last one, but a competitor could come out with new exciting hardware at any moment (a recent example is VR headsets) and then gamers would flock to the new platforms and so would game developers. Since people care less about old titles, the barrier to entry is not nearly as high as in the Windows or Office cases.

That said, my case is shaky enough, and I wager that you could find counter-examples that would make the Xbox omission tiny in comparison :) I just had this thought and was surprised by how many companies sorta fit the pattern.

Last I checked the XBox was still a net loss for MS. Ed: http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h.... The numbers look really bad if you look at opportunity cost. And long term things are not so hot as they still don't own the market with the PS4 selling significantly faster. http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/187371-ps4-outselling-the-...

However they sold a wide range of peripherals (mice, keyboard, etc) which was profitable just not a significant impact on their bottom line.

Or the intellimouse.

There's another thing that's important about company names, and more generally any product or software name. It has to be google-able. The amount of frustration that come from trying to find a generic software name is awful. E.g. Go, finding anything about go is awful until you start using golang.

Well, that criticism extends to all programming languages named after letters of the alphabet, metal oxides, musical notation, famous mathematicians, places, or just generic English words.

Agreed. What's worse is when a generic software name becomes so popular that searching for the real actual item becomes nearly impossible (the classic example of this is searching for windows, those big glass things). I truly hate when I am searching for some obscure technology item and some programmer decided to name their pet project after it because it "sounds cool". Give a name that describes it, please, and help both users and non-users alike! Your enterprise software is not actually turbomachinery!

Yes, of course. But so does everything else. And the name interacts with the perception of your company coming from all those other sources.

This is complexity. You have to understand the whole story, not just the cover of the book.

Initially, Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with an "A" for alphabetic list purpose.