In a regular day-to-day life one is highly expected to across a minimum of three familiar brands through various channels of communication like internet, social media, television or maybe just a stroll down the road. While many of us can recall the brand and its offering given the name, not many are would be aware of the meaning, full forms of the most popular and highly used brands.

Here’s a list of our top 20 brands with their full forms and origin stories:

1. Amul 

Amul stands for “Anand Milk Union Limited” named after Anand, the milk capital of India which is located in Gujarat. 

2.  AND

The fashion brand stands for Anita Dongre who happens to be the creative founder and designer of the brand. 

3. BMW

The luxury car brand BMW stands for “Bayerische Motoren Werke”. For assistance in proper pronunciation you may want to check Google once. 

4. BPL

The television brand BPL stands for “British Physical Laboratories”.

5. DKNY

The fashion brand DKNY is named after its founder Donna Karan and the city where it was founded New York. 

6. ESPN 

The sports broadcasting TV channel stands for “Entertainment And Sports Programming Network” which is clearly all it stands for. 

7. FCUK

The much popular fashion brand French Connection started using ‘FCUK’ after getting the idea from faxes between Hong Kong and UK which were headed “FCHK to FCUK”

8. FIAT

FIAT stands for “Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino” which is an acronym, meaning “Italian automobile factory of Turin”.

9. H&M

In Swedish, “Hennes” means ‘hers’ which was the name of the original store. “Mauritz” was the name of a shop acquired by H&M founder Erling Persson, who later joined the 2 words together thus making it “Hennes & Mauritz”.

10. HDFC Bank

Registered in 1994, HDFC Bank Limited was promoted by the Indian housing company “Housing Development Finance Corporation”, which is where the name comes from. 

11. HP

HP stands for “Hewlett Packard”- the American multinational information technology company responsible for its operations. 

12. IBM

Originated in 1911 the company was renamed “International Business Machines” in 1924. 

13. ICICI Bank 

The bank was started by the ICICI Indian financial institution, and that’s where it gets its name from. 

14. ITC

ITC was originally established as the “Imperial Tobacco Company”, but was renamed in 1970 as the “Indian Tobacco Company”.

15. Intel 

This company’s name is a combination of the words “Integrated Electronics”.

16. JBL 

This audio company was founded by “James Bullough Lansing” in 1946, and it is the initials of his name that he used as the name of the brand.

17. LEGO

LEGO is an abbreviation of the words “Leg Godt”, which means ‘play well’ in Danish.

18. LG

Originally called Goldstar, the ‘lucky’ was added after a merger with Lucky Chemical and LG Cable in 1995.

19. MRF

Rubber product manufacturing company MRF which has its headquarters in Chennai, which was also known as Madras, and derives its name from the same and stands for Madras Rubber Factory.

Adidas is actually the short form of its founder’s name Adolf Dassler.