Five Famous Websites - How They Got Their Names

1. Yahoo.com
It's hard to believe that a site as cool as yahoo actually started with a name as uncool as “Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web” but that's the truth. The name yahoo came from the fact that the company founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo had nicknamed themselves the Chief Yahoos and instead of spending countless hours trying to find another name, taking out the 's' to leave it as yahoo seemed a much more viable option. As history would prove, this wasn't such a bad idea after all despite its definition.

2. Google.com
In an alternate universe, if you have a problem wish to look it up on the internet, you would have to “Backrub” it. This was the name that Larry Page and Sergey Brin intially settled for as the domain name for their search engine. Thank heavens it never caught on and soon the two geniuses had to brainstorm another name. They had already decided that they wanted a name that would relate to googol, a mathematical word that refers to a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Unfortunately for them Googol had already been taken. How the term Google would eventually come about is something the world might never know with many conspiracies being brought forth such as a misspelled name on a check. The result however is a universe where when we need to know something or even get something, all we have to do is go online and 'google' it.

3. GoDaddy.com
The name GoDaddy may be considered by many to be quite daring but for Bob Parsons it would definitely prove to be a lot more successful than Jomax Technologies. When searching for another name for the domain naming site somebody threw in the name BigDaddy. As chance would have it, this domain name had already been taken but with a few tweaks, GoDaddy.com was ready for the World Wide Web.

4. Asus.com
According to the founders, the name Asus came from the last four letters of the mythical winged horse in Greek mythology called Pegasus. While the name did bear quite an obvious resemblance to Acer, the company for which the founders of Asus had worked, it was also plain to see that the company was willing to go out and create a reputation for itself and not ride on the name of Acer. It also helped that the founder of the company, Jonney Shih was crazy for a name that started with the letter 'A' which would be easier to remember.

5. Fark.com
If you were online and somebody asked your which site you were on, you would probably be a lot safer writing this one down other than saying it out loud. There are many theories as to why Drew Curtis came to settle on this name with quite a few suggesting it was the result of a misspelled world that had much more explicit implications. However nowadays to him Fark.com is simply what many media outlets will try to pass off as news when there isn't any actual news to report. Fark.com specializes in telling weird or strange stories and with this kind of niche, the name almost seems to be appropriate.

Dmitry Davydov works for PickyDomains.com, a no-risk naming agency. We can find a perfect domain for you or your business and you pay us only if you decide to use it.