A couple weeks ago, when I was sitting at Arby’s, my seat afforded me a wonderful view of the old Kmart sign across the way. So naturally I started wondering just where the names of businesses came from.
Right then I made it my mission to find out the origins of actual company names that are just initials or perhaps peppy-sounding acronyms. But before I started my quest, I needed to get some walking-around money from my tax refund.
That made my first stop H&R Block. Not surprisingly, the “H” and “R” stands for “Henry and Richard,” whose last name was actually “Bloch.” Probably figuring that no one would want to have their taxes prepared by a company that most people pronounced “Blotch,” they decided to spell their surname the way it’s pronounced.
Then I hit the road. Since I can’t afford a BMW, which stands for “Bayerische Motoren Werke” (Bavarian Motor Works), I took my old GMC, whose initials may have actually stood for “Grabosky Motor Company” (after brothers Max and Morris) before it was acquired by General Motors Company.
In order to keep from giving too much money to OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), I installed some new AC spark plugs, which come from the company started by Albert Champion after he was forced out of his first spark plug company. (Fun fact: Before coming to America, Champion won the 1899 edition of the brutal Paris-Roubaix bicycle race in northern France.)
Just my luck, backing out of my garage, I smashed into my old Fiat, which stands for Fabbrica Italiano Automobili Torino (Turin Italian Automobile Factory, not “Fix it again, Tony”). During a quick call to Geico (Government Employees Insurance Company), they agreed to repairs I needed, which included products by Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America), 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) and PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) products.
After a long day on the road (and in the body shop), it was nice to finally get back home where I could work on my Legos (from the Danish “leg godt” or “play well”) just delivered by DHL (after its founders, Messrs Dalsey, Hillblom and Lynn), and assemble that bookcase from IKEA (from the initials of Ingvar Kampradand and his Elmtrayd Farm in Agunnaryd, Sweden).
Fed up with reading instructions, I decided it was time for supper, which consisted of KFC (the former Kentucky Fried Chicken, which shortened its name to initials after the Commonwealth of Kentucky said it was going to charge for using its name) and a side of B&M (Burnham and Morrill) baked beans. For dessert it’s M&Ms (which stands for “Murrie and Mars,” even though Mr. Mars bought out Mr. Murrie about 75 years ago) and PEZ (from the German word “pfefferminz” or peppermint) before settling down for some television.
Eager for my nightly overdose of sports news, I fired up my LG (Lucky Goldstar) TV and tuned in to ESPN, which stood for “Entertainment and Sports Programming Network” until 1985, but now stands for nothing in particular.
As for the names of Kmart and Arby’s, the “K” in Kmart came from founder SS Kresge’s first discount store in 1962, while Arby’s was derived from RB’s, the first restaurant of the Raffel Brothers — Leroy and Forrest. Great, now I want curly fries.
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