List of Company Name Etymologies - V

V

• Vaisala – Finnish company named after its founder, Professor Vilho Väisälä
• Valero Energy Corporation – From Misión San Antonio de Valero, the Spanish-language name of the mission in the company's home city better known as The Alamo.
• Valtra – from Valmet Tractors, where Valmet is the name of a Finnish state-owned company (originally Valtion Metallitehtaat – English: State Metalworks)
• Varig – A Brazilian airline, its name is an abbreviation of Viação Aérea Rio-Grandense, because it was founded in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
• Verizon – a portmanteau of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon.
• Virgin – founder Richard Branson started a magazine called Student while still at school. In his autobiography, Losing My Virginity, Branson says that when they were starting a business to sell records by mail order, "one of the girls suggested: 'What about Virgin? We're complete virgins at business.'"
• VMware – Virtual Machine ware
• Vodafone – from Voice, Data, Telefone. Vodafone made the UK's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on 1 January 1985.
• Volkswagen – from the German for people's car. Ferdinand Porsche wanted to produce a car that was affordable for the masses – the Kraft-durch-Freude-Wagen (or "Strength-Through-Joy car", from a Nazi social organization) later became known, in English, as the Beetle.
• Volvo – from the Latin word volvo, which means "I roll". It was originally a name for a ball bearing being developed by SKF.