List of Company Name Etymologies - H

H

• Häagen-Dazs – Name was invented in 1961 by ice-cream makers Reuben and Rose Mattus of the Bronx "to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship". The name has no meaning.
• Haier – Chinese 海 "sea" and 尔 (a transliteration character; also means "you" in Literary Chinese). Portion of transliteration of German Liebherr 利勃海尔.
• H&M – named from Hennes & Mauritz. In 1947, Swedish businessman Erling Persson established Hennes, a ladies' clothing store, in Västerås, Sweden. "Hennes" is Swedish for "hers". In 1968, Persson bought the Stockholm premises and inventory of a hunting equipment store called Mauritz Widforss. The inventory included a collection of men's clothing, which prompted Persson to expand into menswear.
• Happy Madison Productions – film and TV production company founded by Adam Sandler, its name is taken from the films Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, two of his box office successes.
• Haribo – from the name of the founder and the German home town of the company: Hans Riegel, Bonn.
• Harman Kardon – named after its founders Dr. Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon.
• Harpo Productions – production company founded by Oprah Winfrey. Harpo is Oprah backwards.
• Hasbro – founded by Henry and Helal Hassenfeld, the Hassenfeld Brothers.
• HBOS – UK-based banking company formed by the merger of the Halifax and the Bank of Scotland.
• HCL – Hindustan Computers Ltd, Indian software company founded by Shiv Nadar.
• Hess Corporation – named after its founder Leon Hess.
• HP – Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
• Hispano-Suiza – a former Spanish luxury automotive and engineering firm; its name – literally meaning "Spanish-Swiss" – refers to Spanish origin of the company and Swiss origin of its head engineer Marc Birkigt
• Hitachi – old place name, literally "sunrise"
• HMV – from "His Master's Voice", which appeared in 1899 as the title of a painting of Nipper, a Jack Russell terrier, listening to a gramophone.
• Hoechst – from the name of a district in Frankfurt.
• Honda – from the name of its founder, Soichiro Honda.
• Honeywell – from the name of Mark Honeywell, founder of Honeywell Heating Specialty Co. It later merged with Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company and was finally called Honeywell Inc. in 1963.
• Hospira – the name, selected by the company's employees, is derived from the words hospital, spirit, inspire and the Latin word spero, which means hope. It expresses the hope and optimism that are critical in the healthcare industry.
• Hotmail – Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "HTML" – the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing. (At one time, if you clicked on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you would have seen "HoTMaiL" in the URL, but since Hotmail is now Windows Live Mail, it is no longer there.)
• H&R Block – after the founders, brothers Henry W. and Richard Bloch (with "Bloch" changed to "Block" to avoid mispronunciation).
• HSBC – Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
• HTC Corporation – A contraction of its original corporate name, High Tech Computer Corporation.
• Hudson's Bay Company – in 1670, a Royal Charter granted the lands of the Hudson Bay watershed to "the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay." The company ceded the territory to Canada in 1870.
• Hyundai – connotes the sense of "the present age" or "modernity" in Korean.