Abbreviations are great, aren’t they? BBC, DVD, HSBC, DVLA, GCSE. Why use normal words when you can take almost as long to recite them as letters instead?

Of course, some conveniently shorten into a series of letters that can actually be said as a single, new word. Think acronyms like NASA, SCUBA, laser. Think VAIO.

Today I read of Sony’s redefinition of the famous VAIO brand, and it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea what it had stood for since its creation.

Very Attractive If Overpriced, perhaps?

The truth, it turns out, is not as exciting as I’d hoped. The original Video Audio Integrated Operation will now become the vastly more descriptive and creative Visual Audio Intelligent Organiser. The laptop world can exhale again.

But Sony isn’t the only brand with a famous abbreviation; a fairly obvious one is the use of HTML in the name of HoTMaiL. There are plenty of other IT brands with abbreviated product or company names – and they range from the interesting to the truly cringe-worthy. How many of these did you know?

Starting off gently with places…

Lexmark, a spin-off from IBM’s printer-manufacturing division, was so named after its base in Lexington, Kentucky. Kyocera is abbreviated from the original Kyoto Ceramics Co, while CISCO isn’t actually an acronym, despite appearances – it’s short for San Francisco.

Onto merging company names…

The two companies Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki merged in 1939 to form Tokyo Shibaura Denki, nicknamed Toshiba. It took nearly 40 years for the now-famous name to be made offical.

LG, thankfully, comes from the merger of two Korean companies, Lucky and Goldstar. Far less saccharine than the oft-used “Life’s Good”.

Word meanings…

Samsung comes from the Korean word meaning “three stars”, while Sony itself is derived from Sonus, the Greek goddess of sound. Asus is another abbreviation, and fairly obvious once you know it; it comes from Pegasus, the mythical winged horse.

Finally, the Greek root xer means “dry”, so inventor Chester Carlson used it to distinguish his dry copying device from the wet copying devices of the time; thus Xerox was born.

Place names, merging companies, ancient words and mythical characters. But, much like VAIO once you know what it actually stands for, some acronyms sound exotic but are just plain bad.

Can BenQ really stand for Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to Life?