Microsoft
For a company that makes the software that runs most of the world’s computers (and has been accused of trying to run the world), Microsoft seems to have had some surprising difficulty deciding how to spell its own name.
When founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen were just starting out in 1975, Gates wrote a letter to Allen referring to their nascent partnership by the name “Micro-Soft,” an abbreviation of “microcomputer software.” At that time, the dawn of the age of personal computing, any computer smaller than a bathtub was considered to be “micro,” from the Latin for “small.” Slightly larger computers were dubbed “minicomputers,” an abbreviation of “miniature computer.” (Oddly enough, the English word “miniature” does not derive from the Latin “min,” meaning “small.” Ancient and Medieval manuscripts were illuminated with ink made from red lead, “minium” in Latin. As the illustrations were very small, “miniature” came to mean “small drawing,” and eventually simply “something smaller than usual.”)
Meanwhile, back at “Micro-Soft,” versions of the name bounced back and forth in company literature like typographical tennis balls over the next year or so, ranging from the hyphenated forms “Micro-Soft” and “Micro-soft” to the now-fashionable irregularly capitalized “MicroSoft” to the no-frills “Microsoft.” But when it came time to incorporate their creation in 1976, Gates and Allen went with the simplest form, Microsoft, which a cynic might say was the last uncomplicated thing their company ever did.
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