Do you have a favorite weird brand name?

Did you ever wonder what Häagen-Dazs means? 10 odd brands explained

Image: Alexander Shatov

Some brand names are more straightforward than others. Some are named after their founders or places of origin, some are a description of their products, and others are simply words that sounded right to the people who created them. The following 10 are examples of brand names that, when taken out of their context, sound simply odd. What does Haribo mean? And what about Garmin? These words, now ubiquitous, don’t seem to describe the product they represent but still, are part of our daily lives. Did you know any of their stories?

Image: Jaimie Harmsen

An unusual name when it was presented and now, Yahoo! comes from the book "Gulliver’s Travels" where the word was used to refer to unsophisticated youths. Of course, the founders weren’t trying to define its users this way, they just liked how the name sounded, particularly with the added exclamation mark.

While this name is certainly odd, it’s memorable and rolls easily off the tongue, making it a good choice for a tech brand. And, like all the following entries on this list, has become a household word, making it much more acceptable to everyone.

Image: britt gaiser

Kodak is an example of a made-up name that doesn’t appear to have a lot of meaning at first glance. When coming up with the brand name, George Eastman, the founder, concentrated a lot of his attention on the letter "K", which he considered to be a particularly strong-sounding one.

As he said: "I devised the name myself. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words start and end with 'K.' The word 'Kodak' is the result." Eastman also selected Kodak's distinctive yellow trade dress, which is widely known throughout the world.

Image: Markus Clemens

Reebok has a weird name for a sports-focused brand. According to the company, the name comes from the word "Rhebok", which is a kind of African antelope. The founders liked the word, which they found in a South African dictionary, and felt it was a compelling term to use for their own business. After a slight wording change, the now-famous brand was born.

Since the antelope is a creature often connected with speed, it makes a lot of sense for an athletics brand. Since then, the word has been showcased everywhere.

Image: Centre for Ageing Better

Xerox is a strange word, and it sounds unusual when spoken out loud. But, there’s some deeper meaning to this title. It means "dry writing" when translated from Greek and refers to the unique process of printing created by the Xerox company.

As it turns out, Joseph C. Wilson, who is credited as the "founder of Xerox", was looking for a term to differentiate its new system, hired a Greek scholar at Ohio State University, and coined the term xerography, which in turn, became the root of the name we now today.

Image: Alexander Shatov

At first, Twitter was going to be called "Twitch" and then "Status." But neither of those names seemed to fit the bill. After consulting the Thesaurus, the founder, Jack Dorsey, and his team came up with the name "Twitter," meaning a short statement of inconsequential content, never imagining that sitting US presidents would one day use his app as a political platform.

After the company exchanged hands, the name was changed to "X" but most people still refer to it by its old name and even call the postings, "twits".

Image: Christian Wiediger

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, wanted the name "Cadabra" for his online bookstore, as in Abracadabra. But when his lawyer heard the name and said that it reminded him of cadaver, the term was shelved. After that, Bezos decided to go with Amazon because words that began with the letter "A" were the first to appear in the old internet directories. And, apparently, he liked the word "Amazon".

It might seem hard to believe that the behemoth company that Amazon is today started on such a whimsical note, but it did.

Image: Egor Myznik

A portmanteau is a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others, like "motel", which is the combination of mobile and hotel, or brunch, which combines breakfast and lunch. Well, the story of Garmin’s name is somewhere along those lines.

This popular GPS brand’s name is a portmanteau that combines the names of the two company’s founders: Gary Burrell and Dr. Min Kao (Gar-min). It might sound like a bit of a lazy strategy for naming such an important company but, in the end, it worked.

Image: Alexas_Fotos

The second portmanteau on this list corresponds to another odd name: Haribo. One of the world’s best-known sweets brand’s name is a mash-up between the company’s founder and its headquarters. Hans Riegel is the man who founded the company and Bonn is Haribo’s hometown.

Some people even go as far as saying that the name reminds them of an Asian confectionery of some kind, but, as we know now, its origins are very much European because there are not many names as German as Hans, right?

Image: WikimediaImages

The third and final portmanteau on this list corresponds to another hugely popular company that manufactures the beloved Oreo cookies. The National Biscuit Company transformed its name into a mash-up of its old name: Na-Bis-Co.

The first use of the name Nabisco was in a cracker brand produced by the National Biscuit Company in 1901 and maybe it is because we have heard and read this name so much and it has become a household word but Nabisco does sound like a cookie or at least, a food company, doesn’t it?

Image: Dylan Ferreira

As it is common knowledge, Europeans make great ice cream. Therefore, a complicated and European-sounding name can be aptly associated with delicious ice cream, right? Reuben and Rose Mattus thought exactly that in the 1960s, as they wanted their business name to convey an aura of tradition and craftsmanship.

Häagen-Dazs is an invented pseudo-Scandinavian phrase coined in a quest for a brand name that sounded Danish. However, the company's pronunciation of the name ignores the letters "ä" and "s", and letters like "ä" or digraphs like "zs" do not exist in the Danish language.

Extraterrestrial forecasts

From diamond rain to iron storms: 10 craziest alien weather facts

Image: Viktor Mindt

Weather on Earth might be wild, but compared to other planets, it’s downright boring. Across our solar system—and beyond—insane storms, metallic rain, and atmosphere-shredding winds violently shape alien worlds. Here are 10 of the weirdest and most extreme weather events ever observed in space.

Image: Bas van den Eijkhof

Location: Neptune & Uranus

In the atmospheres of these ice giants, intense pressure crushes methane into solid carbon, forming diamonds that fall like hail.

Estimates suggest that billions of carats worth of diamonds may exist in the deep interiors of these planets, possibly forming layered structures similar to geological strata.

Image: NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Location: HD 189733b

This exoplanet is bombarded by winds blowing at over 5,400 mph—about seven times faster than the speed of sound.

Fortunately, all of this is happening far from Earth—HD 189733b is a 'hot Jupiter' located 63 light-years away. Its atmosphere endures extreme heat on one side and frigid cold on the other, fueling violent winds that circle the planet.

Image: Planet Volumes

Location: Venus

Venus has clouds of sulfuric acid that rain—but the droplets evaporate before they hit the surface.

Temperatures on Venus reach 870°F, hot enough to melt lead. Acid droplets form high in the atmosphere but vaporize at lower altitudes, creating a corrosive "rain cycle."

Image: NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Location: Jupiter

A storm larger than Earth has been raging on Jupiter for over 350 years.

First observed in the 1600s, the Great Red Spot is a massive anticyclone with wind speeds exceeding 400 mph. It’s so large that it could easily swallow our planet whole.

Image: Planet Volumes

Location: Saturn

A massive six-sided jet stream spins around Saturn’s north pole. NASA’s Cassini mission captured this bizarre atmospheric pattern, which spans nearly 20,000 miles.

Surprisingly, it's a persistent weather feature—not a surface structure.

Image: Daniele Colucci

Location: Mars

Mars is famous for its massive, planet-wide dust storms. These weather events can last for weeks and obscure the entire planet from view.

NASA’s Opportunity rover went silent during one of these dust storms in 2018 and never recovered. The catch? Mars doesn’t have enough atmosphere for the winds to be truly dangerous—sorry, The Martian.

Image: Andy Holmes

Location: Boomerang Nebula

The coldest known natural place in the universe is the outer cloud of a dying star. The Boomerang Nebula, located 5,000 light-years away, reaches temperatures near 1 Kelvin—colder than the cosmic background.

This happens because the star’s gas expands so rapidly that it chills below the temperature of empty space itself.

Image: Morteza Mohammadi

Location: WASP-76b

On this ultra-hot exoplanet, iron vaporizes on the dayside and rains down as molten metal on the nightside.

These extreme temperatures are reached because WASP-76b is tidally locked, with day-side temperatures over 4,000°F.

Image: Javid Naderi

Location: The Sun

The Sun hosts giant tornadoes made of superheated plasma. These solar events can be up to 10,000 miles tall and spin at thousands of miles per hour.

They’re driven by magnetic fields and can feed into solar flares and coronal mass ejections—fiery explosions that can even impact Earth.

Image: NASA

Location: The Moon

The Moon may experience electrostatic dust storms during lunar dawn and dusk. When the Sun hits the lunar surface, it creates an electric field that lifts tiny dust particles off the ground.

This phenomenon was first suspected during the Apollo missions and has been confirmed through recent satellite observations.