Here's How Some Of The Largest Automakers Got Their Names

Carmaker names are not nearly as celebrated as carmaker logos but they're just as rich in heritage, both good and bad. Automobiles have been around since the late 1700s, but they didn't take off until after the Industrial Revolution. World Wars I and II would catapult auto manufacturing into what we know today: a landscape dominated by Volkswagen, Toyota, General Motors and Ford.

How those carmakers got their names seems straightforward, but the mergers and acquisitions that resulted in their lineups are full of intrigue and anecdotal accounts of industrial subterfuge. Carmakers folded and flourished, dying on the vine so that others could bloom, and picking up neat names along the way.

If you've ever sat in traffic looking at the car in front of you and wondered just where its name comes from, this is for you. Here are the stories behind some of the biggest automakers' names:

• Year Founded: 1903

• Place of Origin: Detroit, Michigan, United States

  Ford is named after founder Henry Ford (surprise!), who's most famous for the Model T. The Model T, however, was preceded by the Model A, an earlier vehicle that debuted in 1903 when the company was started. Before that, Ford had designed the Quadricyle, a two-cylinder machine that predates the Model T by 12 years. You might recall Ford is also known for using interchangeable parts in vehicle assembly and for his antisemitic views, which would go on to inspire another key player in Germany's own automotive history. We'll get there.

• Year Founded: 1911

• Place of Origin: Detroit and Flint, Michigan, United States

  GMC's roots trace back to the Grabowsky Brothers of Detroit, who started Grabowsky Motor Company in 1902, and, later, the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, according to Hagerty. Max and Morris Grabowsky made trucks that gained recognition for their durability, but Grabowsky Motor was gone by 1909, when William Durant bought Rapid and merged it with Reliance and Randolph to turn it into the General Motors Truck Co. under the umbrella of GM.

• Year Founded: 1925

• Place of Origin: Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan, United States

  Walter P. Chrysler founded the automaker and named it after himself in 1925. He'd held a number of high positions at General Motors and Buick before going on to Willys-Overland and the Maxwell Motor Corporation in 1921. He formed the Chrysler Corporation by absorbing Maxwell's production lines and phasing out its automobiles. Walter Chrysler was able to do this given the success of the Chrysler Six, which debuted in 1924 for $1,565.

• Year Founded: 1911

• Place of Origin: Flint, Michigan, United States

  William Durant named Chevrolet after one of his founding partners, the Swiss race car driver and engineer Louis Chevrolet. Durant had often asked Chevrolet to pilot race cars back when he was the head of the Buick Motor Company, and that relationship turned into a partnership in 1911. The partnership broke a few years later and Chevrolet sold his stake to Durant, who used the proceeds to buy a controlling interest in GM and merge the two automakers, with him returning to GM's leadership and being elected president.

• Year Founded: 1902

• Place of Origin: Detroit, Michigan, United States

  Henry M. Leland started Cadillac in 1902, which actually predates the luxury carmaker's parent company, General Motors. Leland named Cadillac after the founder of the city of Detroit, French explorer Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac. The company's early cars wore the Cadillac family crest, which has evolved into the logo these luxury cars wear today.

  Cadillac

• Year Founded: 1937

• Place of Origin: Toyota (Koromo,) Aichi, Japan 

  The Toyoda name is synonymous with cars, but the family achieved much of its success prior to the Japanese car boom in the postwar period. In the early 1900s, Sakichi Toyoda invented the automatic loom and his son, Kiichiro Toyoda, improved its design. The younger Toyoda would later trade textiles for cars, and the rest is automotive history, which I'll let the carmaker describe below. The story goes that Toyota held a contest for the new company's logo. The winning design traded the "t" in Toyota for a "d" as it required fewer strokes to draw in katakana, and it was also easier for folks abroad to pronounce.

• Year Founded: 1933

• Place of Origin: Yokohama, Kanegawa, Japan

  Yoshisuke Aikawa founded Nissan in 1933, but the automaker's roots trace to 1914 with a number of companies making cars in Japan, most notably the DAT and Datson (son of Dat) in 1930. Aikawa came from a wealthy family and was an engineer by trade, but he spent time in the U.S. as metalworker when the auto industry was taking off. He was asked to rebuild a family business called Kuhara Kogyo, and renamed it to Nihon Sangyo, combining "Ni-" from Nippon or Japan, and "-San" from the Japanese word for industry "sangyo." Aikawa merged Tobata Foundry Co. with Nihon Sangyo and Dat Motorcar Co. to make Nissan, whose logo represents a rising sun.

• Year Founded: 1920

• Place of Origin: Fuchū, Hiroshima, Japan

  Mazda made cork under the name Toyo Cork Kogyo when Jujiro Matsuda joined the company in 1921. He'd designed the Matsuda Pump at a young age, and was asked to help the ailing company. By 1927, it was renamed to Toyo Kogyo and traded cork for machinery. The name Mazda first appeared in 1934 on the three-wheeled "truck," the Mazda Go. It was named after Ahura Mazda, the god of harmony, intelligence and wisdom. And it didn't hurt that Mazda sounded similar to the name of one of this new venture's founders, Matsuda.

• Year Founded: 1946

• Place of Origin: Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan

  Soichiro Honda founded the eponymous Honda Technical Research Institute to make small internal combustion engines in postwar Japan. His plan was to retrofit surplus generator motors to bicycles. And three years later, in 1949, Honda made its first vehicle that was fully designed in-house, the "Dream."

• Year Founded: 1909

• Place of Origin: Zwickau, Saxony, Germany

  The name Audi was a clever way to get around trademark laws since founder August Horch's name was already in use at another automaker, which he had established prior to Audi. According to the story, Horch is German for "hark" or "listen." One day, the son of a business partner suggested naming the company after the Latin translation for Horch, which is "audire," and August was smitten with the idea.

• Year Founded: 1916

• Place of Origin: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

  BMW AG was founded by Gustav Otto, an engineer and plane maker. BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke, or Bavarian Motor Works, but that name succeeded Otto's aircraft company, Bayerische Flugzeug-Werke (BFW,) around 1922 — some years after Otto was ousted due to financial woes. In 1923, BMW made its first motorcycle, the R 32. BMW's boxer-powered bike would keep it busy until it started making cars in the late 1920s.

• Year Founded: 1926

• Place of Origin: Sttutgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

  Mercedes-Benz came from the merger of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) and Benz & Cie., founded by Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz, respectively. Their designs date back to the late 1800s, but it wasn't until a prominent businessman and racing enthusiast named Emil Jellinek requested and sold vehicles from Daimler that the name "Mercedes" would be used. Jellinek named the cars after his daughter, and when Daimler-Benz AG was founded in 1926, Mercedes-Benz became the name for the vehicles bearing a three-pointed star.

  Mercedes-Benz

• Year Founded: 1937

• Place of Origin: Berlin, Germany

  Volkswagen famously means "the people's car," and the brand is infamously tied to the Nazi party. The automaker came from an initiative overseen by the German Labour Front (DAF,) or in other words, the Nazis. The vehicles were developed at the behest of Adolf Hitler's party in a state-subsidized effort to make cheap cars for Germans. Ferdinand Porsche designed VW's first cars, which would go on to become the famous Beetle. In 1938, the prototype car was presented to Hitler, who called it the "KdF-Wagen." Hitler cited Henry Ford as an inspiration.

• Year Founded: 1967

• Place of Origin: Seoul, South Korea

  Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. was founded by Chung Ju-Yung in 1947. Twenty years later, this yielded the Hyundai Motor Company, which produced Cortina models for Ford at the Ulsan assembly plant. Hyundai wouldn't make its own car until 1975, dubbed the Hyundai Pony. The new car went well with the company's name which stands for "new age" or "modern times," from the Korean "hyun" meaning modern, and "dai" meaning age.

• Year Founded: 1944

• Place of Origin: Seoul, South Korea

  Kia was founded as the Kyungsung Precision Industry in 1944 by Kim Chul Ho as a steel tubing and bicycle parts maker. It was renamed to the shorter Kia Industries, which means to "rise in Asia," per the New York Times. The name comes from its two Sino-Korean characters, "ki (起)" and "a (亚)," which taken together mean "to rise from Asia." In 1952, Kia introduced Korea's first bicycle, known as the Samchully. Kia then built two- and three-wheeled vehicles for Honda and Mazda before going on to make trucks and passenger cars based on the Mazda Brisa.