[ad_1]
“
Most of the world’s largest companies have simple names. Steve Jobs named Apple while on a fruit diet, and he found the name “fun, lively, and not scary.” Plus, it came before Atari in the phone book. Microsoft is a combination of the words “microcomputer” and “software,” while Wal-Mart is a combination of supermarket founder Sam Walton’s last name and “Matt.”
Nvidia, which briefly held the title of the world’s most valuable company last week, defies these easy branding conventions. The consonant-filled name and eerie ’90s op-art logo evoke its roots as an underdog and startup rather than its current reality: a giant dominating the market for artificial BroadCast Unitedligence chips.
Despite its unconventionality, Nvidia’s prominence requires conversation, and conversation requires pronunciation. So what is the correct pronunciation of Nvidia?
According to its website, Nvidia is pronounced “en-VID-eeyah,” not NUH-vid-eeyah as many people say.
Where does the name “Nvidia” come from?
When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang co-founded the company with friends Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem in 1993, they discussed almost every detail of their new business except the name. Sitting in a Denny’s in Palo Alto, where the coffee was cheap and Huang had worked as a young man, the three co-founders couldn’t come up with a name for their company.
So, as Huang previously told Fortune, as they continued to build, they simply named the next version of the file “NV.” When the company was founded, the trio was forced to come up with a name. At first, they chose NVision until they discovered that a toilet paper manufacturer had already used that name.
After going back to the drawing board, the co-founders reviewed all words with “NV” in them until Huang suggested Nvidia, using the Latin word invidia, which means “envy.”
The name worked because the trio hoped to design a graphics chip so powerful that competitors would “become the envy of others,” as Primm previously told The New Yorker.
The first “Nvidia”
The first “Nvidia” was Invidia, the Roman goddess of jealousy. As the Roman poet Ovid described her in Metamorphoses, her heart was “dyed green with bile,” her tongue dripped with poison, and she was “pale, emaciated, and her vision narrowed in every direction.”
The company’s branding wouldn’t normally be inspired by Roman mythology, let alone such an unpleasant character. Yet the motive of envy seems to be present in all of the company’s products. The motto of its eighth-generation graphics processing unit is “Envy and Hate”.
Nvidia’s logo is a spiraling green eye, which may also have been inspired by the first generation of Invidia. Its image is associated with a piercing gaze, an “evil eye” that curses those it envies. People of many religious beliefs still wear “evil eye” amulets or recite prayers to ward off curses.
Many companies have reason to envy Nvidia right now. With a $3.1 trillion market cap, unprecedented market concentration, and seemingly limitless growth, Nvidia’s success is every CEO’s dream.
Huang may have anticipated this and deliberately put jealousy at the forefront to remind his competitors that they were catching up to him. According to The New Yorker, for years Huang would start every staff meeting by saying, “Our company is 30 days away from closing.”
Apparently, even with all of its success, this phrase remains the unofficial company motto.
Sign up for the Fortune Next to Lead newsletter for weekly strategies on how to get into the front office. Sign up for free before it launches on June 24, 2024. ”
[ad_2]
Source link
