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π List of company name etymologies
This is a list of company names with their name origins explained. Some of the origins are disputed.
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- "List of company name etymologies" | 2011-09-27 | 66 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Gerard of Cremona
Gerard of Cremona (Latin: Gerardus Cremonensis; c. 1114 β 1187) was an Italian translator of scientific books from Arabic into Latin. He worked in Toledo, Kingdom of Castile, and obtained the Arabic books in the libraries at Toledo. Some of the books had been originally written in Greek and, although well known in Byzantine Constantinople and Greece at the time, were unavailable in Greek or Latin in Western Europe. Gerard of Cremona is the most important translator among the Toledo School of Translators who invigorated Western medieval Europe in the twelfth century by transmitting the Arabs' and ancient Greeks' knowledge in astronomy, medicine and other sciences, by making the knowledge available in Latin. One of Gerard's most famous translations is of Ptolemy's Almagest from Arabic texts found in Toledo.
Confusingly, there appear to have been two translators of Arabic text into Latin known as Gerard of Cremona. The first was active in the 12th century and concentrated on astronomy and other scientific works, while the second was active in the 13th century and concentrated on medical works.
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- "Gerard of Cremona" | 2026-03-26 | 41 Upvotes 18 Comments
π The Nature of the Firm (1937)
"The Nature of the Firm" (1937) is an article by Ronald Coase. It offered an economic explanation of why individuals choose to form partnerships, companies and other business entities rather than trading bilaterally through contracts on a market. The author was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991 in part due to this paper. Despite the honor, the paper was written when Coase was an undergraduate and he described it later in life as "little more than an undergraduate essay."
The article argues that firms emerge because they are better equipped to deal with the transaction costs inherent in production and exchange than individuals are. Economists such as Oliver Williamson, Douglass North, Oliver Hart, Bengt HolmstrΓΆm, Arman Alchian and Harold Demsetz expanded on Coase's work on firms, transaction costs and contracts. Economists and political scientists have used insights from Coase's work to explain the functioning of organizations in general, not just firms. Coase's work strongly influenced the New Economics of Organization (New Institutional Economics).
Coase's article distinguished between markets as a coordination mechanism and firms as a coordination mechanism.
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- "The Nature of the Firm (1937)" | 2022-05-13 | 132 Upvotes 56 Comments
π Abram Petrovich Gannibal
Abram Petrovich Gannibal, also Hannibal or Ganibal, or Abram Hannibal or Abram Petrov (Russian: ΠΠ±ΡΠ°ΜΠΌ ΠΠ΅ΡΡΠΎΜΠ²ΠΈΡ ΠΠ°Π½Π½ΠΈΠ±Π°ΜΠ»; c. 1696 β 14 May 1781), was a Russian military engineer, major-general, and nobleman of African origin. Kidnapped as a child, Gannibal was taken to Russia and presented as a gift to Peter the Great, where he was freed, adopted and raised in the Emperor's court household as his godson.
Gannibal eventually rose to become a prominent member of the imperial court in the reign of Peter's daughter Elizabeth. He had 11 children, most of whom became members of the Russian nobility; he was a great-grandfather of the author and poet Alexander Pushkin.
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- "Abram Petrovich Gannibal" | 2021-06-03 | 55 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Battle of Athens (1946)
The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World WarΒ II veterans, accused the local officials of predatory policing, police brutality, political corruption, and voter intimidation.
π Homey Airport
Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force Base, the facility is officially called Homey Airport (ICAO: KXTA, FAA LID: XTA) or Groom Lake (after the salt flat next to its airfield). Details of its operations are not made public, but the USAF says that it is an open training range, and it is commonly thought to support the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems. The USAF and CIA acquired the site in 1955, primarily for flight testing the Lockheed U-2 aircraft.
The intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component of unidentified flying object (UFO) folklore. It has never been declared a secret base, but all research and occurrences in Area 51 are Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). The CIA publicly acknowledged the base's existence on 25 June 2013, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2005 and declassified documents detailing its history and purpose.
Area 51 is located in the southern portion of Nevada, 83 miles (134Β km) north-northwest of Las Vegas. The surrounding area is a popular tourist destination, including the small town of Rachel on the "Extraterrestrial Highway".
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- "Homey Airport" | 2023-07-27 | 10 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Expect β automates programs that expose a text terminal interface
Expect is an extension to the TCL scripting language written by Don Libes. The program automates interactions with programs that expose a text terminal interface. Expect, originally written in 1990 for the Unix platform, has since become available for Microsoft Windows and other systems.
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- "Expect β automates programs that expose a text terminal interface" | 2013-03-25 | 69 Upvotes 31 Comments
π Solarpunk
Solarpunk is a movement that encourages optimistic envisionings of the future in light of present environmental concerns, such as climate change and pollution, as well as social inequality. Solarpunk encompasses a multitude of media such as literature, art, architecture, fashion, music, and games. Solarpunk focuses on renewable energies, as well as technology as a whole, to envision a positive future for humanity; although, it also embraces less advanced ways to reduce carbon emissions, like gardening. Solarpunk is also a genre of speculative fiction; some of the most well-known examples are Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World and Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation.
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- "Solarpunk" | 2025-03-02 | 432 Upvotes 269 Comments
- "Solarpunk" | 2022-08-16 | 23 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Solarpunk" | 2020-04-16 | 25 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Reification (Computer Science)
Reification is the process by which an abstract idea about a computer program is turned into an explicit data model or other object created in a programming language. A computable/addressable objectβa resourceβis created in a system as a proxy for a non computable/addressable object. By means of reification, something that was previously implicit, unexpressed, and possibly inexpressible is explicitly formulated and made available to conceptual (logical or computational) manipulation. Informally, reification is often referred to as "making something a first-class citizen" within the scope of a particular system. Some aspect of a system can be reified at language design time, which is related to reflection in programming languages. It can be applied as a stepwise refinement at system design time. Reification is one of the most frequently used techniques of conceptual analysis and knowledge representation.
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- "Reification (Computer Science)" | 2017-10-09 | 12 Upvotes 2 Comments