High St shop name meanings after Asda's baffles shoppers - from Adidas to Ikea
It's a household name we see and hear most weeks.
Yet a recent discussion on Twitter led by broadcaster Alastair Stewart has revealed most people have no idea what the name ASDA really stands for.
The famous supermarket’s name all comes down to a merger in 1965. Brothers Peter and Fred Asquith were running a butcher’s shop in Yorkshire but on a trip to America got the idea for ‘under one roof’ store, after visiting the Piggly Wiggly, dubbed the world’s first supermarket after opening in 1916.
The siblings decided to expand, and so proposed the idea to Noel Stockdale at Associated Dairies. The two firms made the clever decision to partner up and ASDA was born on May 3, 1965; the name deriving from AS-quith and DA-iries.
But what about your other high street favourites? Here are the meanings behind other famous shop names.
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Alastair Stewart discussed store names on Twitter (PA)IKEA
No, it’s not a Swedish word. IKEA is in fact an acronym for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd. The popular home outfitters was set up in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, aged just 17, in Almhult, Sweden, as a mostly mail-order sales business.
However, it wasn’t until the Second World War ended that it began to sell furniture. Elmtaryd is the farm where Ingvar grew up and the A stands for his hometown of Agunnaryd.
ASOS
This online shop was ahead of the curve when it was launched in 1999. Originally called ‘As Seen On Screen’ the company had the tagline “Buy what you see on film and TV”. It sold unbranded copies of celebrities’ clothing, but in 2000 the domain name www.asos.com was bought, and it has been at the forefront of internet shopping ever since.
Adidas
It’s an established urban rumour that Adidas stands for ‘All Day I Dream About Sport’, but this isn’t actually true. Adidas was founded in 1949 in Herzogenaurach, Germany by Adolf “Adi” Dassler who had first begun making sports shoes in his mothers wash room in the 1920s.
Adidas was founded in 1949 in Herzogenaurach, Germany (PA)The brand and shop name actually came from his first name and the start of his last name ‘Adi’ - a nickname for Adolf - and ‘Das’ from Dassler.
ALDI
Brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht took over their father’s grocery store company in 1946 in Essen, Germany. They soon expanded to multiple shops, and by 1962 had changed the name to Aldi—short for Albrecht Discount.
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However, in the 1960s the two siblings had a falling out over whether they should sell cigarettes. The brothers decided to split the business into Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd (which includes the UK). In 1966 the companies became financially and legally separate, so depending where you are in the world it is a different company.
GAP
The first California, at the height of the hippie movement. The American clothing company’s aim was to make good quality jeans as co-founder Don Fisher claimed he couldn’t find a pair that fit him.
Gap clothing shop was launched in 1969 in San Francisco (Graham Young / BirminghamLive)The company wanted to target a younger audience therefore the name was chosen to reflect the generation gap at the time.
eBay
Iranian-American businessman named Pierre Omidya started the company AuctionWeb in 1995 to sell things online. However, two years later he decided to change the name to Echo Bay simply because he thought it “sounded cool”.
EBay came from shortening the name Echo Bay (Daily Mirror)Unfortunately that name was already taken by a Canadian gold mining company, so eBay was born. The first thing the site sold was a broken laser pointer.
Amazon
Billionaire Jeff Bezos started his online bookstore in 1994 from the garage of his rental home in Washington. He had wanted to call it “Cadabra” in reference to the magic word abracadabra.
Amazon started as an online bookstore in 1994 (AFP via Getty Images)However, it was found to be too obscure and some thought it was “cadaver” when said on the phone. Therefore he settled on Amazon, named after the world’s largest river; fitting for what is now one of the world’s largest companies.
Tesco
Tesco was started in 1919 by market trader Jack Cohen in the East End of London. The brand’s name first appeared in 1924 after Jack bought a shipment of tea from Thomas Edward Stockwell. The entrepreneur created new product labels using the initials of the supplier’s name ‘TES’, and the first two letters of his surname ‘CO’ - making the word Tesco.
Zara
Amancio Ortega, founder of the clothing chain, originally named his company Zorba after the 1964 film Zorba the Greek.
Zara first opened in La Coruña, Spain in 1975 (Getty Images)However, when he opened his first store in La Coruña in 1975, there was a bar close by also called Zorba. Amancio had already made the mould for the shop sign, but in order to avoid confusion rearranged the letters to make the word Zara instead. An empire was born.
Starbucks
The famed American coffee shop actually got its name from a literary character. Founder Gordon Bowker said they came up with the name after listing words beginning with “st” because they thought they were powerful.
Starbucks got its name from a literary character (Getty Images)He said: “Somebody somehow came up with an old mining map of the Cascades and Mount Rainier, and there was an old mining town called Starbo. As soon as I saw Starbo, I, of course, jumped to Melville’s first mate in ‘Moby-Dick.’”
The first mate’s name was... Starbuck.
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