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Yes, we know your local fish and chip or kebab takeaways have hilarious names like The Codfather or Abrakebabra, but we’re not interested in that. Nor are we interested in the guy in Hackney who used to run a white-goods stall called Sellfridges. These are the names of huge, international (mostly tech-related) companies with a long and distinguished history. And terrible names. Behold – the worst company names ever.
Research in Motion
The company name itself is achingly dull, but its acronym was a headline writers dream. As Research In Motion blundered from one rubbish phone to the next, the RIM puns started to flow. And then there was company’s recruitment website – RIM Jobs. Thankfully RIM saw sense and renamed itself Blackberry in July 2013.
Every tech startup EVER
While Dixons Carphone runs the risk of being one of the dullest company names ever, Silicon Valley offers a few contenders for dumbest. First we started misspelling things (Google/Googol) missing out letters (Flckr, Tumblr) and then it got silly. As the Wall Street Journal notes many startups just copy what’s gone before. It notes that there are 102 startups that end in ‘ify’ or ‘efy’, 161 that end in ‘ly’, ‘li’ or ‘lee’, 28 that contain ‘box’ and 10 that contain ‘square’. While every company name ending in .ly is great news for Libya, it would be nice to see some diversity.
Amstrad
A name that reeks of tedium, Amstrad actually stands for ‘Alan Michael Sugar Trading’. For Amstrad you could also include a procession of tediously named tech companies whose name inspire a sense of nothingness. Plus, any company that bestowed the ‘e-m@iler’ on the world deserves its place in the annals of history. Further annoyance comes from the Amstrad’s habit of naming spin-offs accordingly – step forward Amserve and Amsoft.
Nigaz
Then there’s just plain offensive. In 2009 Russian energy giant Gazprom snaffled up Nigeria’s state-operated NNPC for £1.53bn. The new firm, as per the BBC, called Nigaz, was responsible for building refiners, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria. At the time The Economist said the name showed a “refreshing ignorance of politically incorrect language”, which just about nails it.
Wayne Kerr
The author recounts time spent at a comprehensive school in Sussex, where the mouse mats were an endless source of juvenile hysteria. The mouse mats, for whatever reason, were sponsored by Wayne Kerr Electronics. A truly unfortunate name for a company that has been rattling along since the 1960s. Clearly a terrible name is no hindrance to success.
Siemens
Founded by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske, you wonder why they didn’t go with the latter’s surname for the company. While it was originally called Siemens & Halske, the company was chopped, changed and eventually settled on Siemens. A spunky decision, you have to admit. Fact of the day, ‘semen’ in German is ‘sperma’ or the far more tongue-twisty samenflüssigkeit.
Bing
Dear lord, Microsoft. Nobody outside of Redmond has ever said ‘Bing it!’ and if they did they were either confused or very well paid. Yes, we know it isn’t strictly a company name, but we couldn’t resist. Take this episode of the Hawaii Five-0 for example, where (in an entirely natural way) Daniel Dae Kim instructs Grace Park to “Bing it”. That she doesn’t look at him with utter derision is one of many flaws in the Hawaii Five-0 remake.
