Poor Mr Bergstresser. He put up the money to start the financial reporting company but his name wasn’t as snappy as those of his two partners, so ‘Dow Jones’ it was. At least he got the rewards, though, unlike Mr Taylor: the grocer sold out to Mr Waite and Mr Rose after just a couple of years, hence Waitrose. Other ‘people’ never existed in the first place. Faber & Faber was started by Geoffrey Faber on his own: he added the second name to sound more respectable. And there was no Mr Aston — Lionel Martin raced his cars at Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire. His wife realised that the combination would put the firm near the beginning of alphabetical trade directories.
Other people sort of existed. Littlewoods (as in the football pools) was founded by three people who couldn’t let their employer know what they were doing for fear of the sack, so one of them, Colin Askham, who had been orphaned as a baby and brought up by an aunt, used his birth name. Dixons, meanwhile, was opened (as a photographic shop) by Charles Kalms and Michael Mindel. But their premises in Southend had room for only six letters, so they picked a name out of the phone book.
Some company names depend on wordplay. Oprah Winfrey’s production company is called Harpo (Oprah backwards), much as the Beatles’ US merchandising company was Seltaeb. Ingvar Kamprad was born on a farm called Elmtaryd near the village of Agunnaryd, hence IKEA. Less obviously Swedish is middle England’s beloved Aga: the oven was produced by the firm Svenska Aktiebolaget Gasaccumulator (‘Swedish Gas Accumulator’). Haribo was started by Hans Riegel of Bonn, Qantas stands for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, and Amstrad denotes ‘Alan Michael Sugar Trading’.
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