General Motors, actually, purchased Rapid Motor Vehicles around the turn of the 20th century and turned it into the General Motors Truck Company. That was “streamlined” into GMC Truck. So presumably the “C” never stood for “Commerical”, but for “Company”.
There are certainly still GMC-branded commercial vehicles (see Business Doesn’t Grow by Chance. It Grows by Change.), generally nearly identical to an equivalent Chevrolet-branded model. Chevrolet light trucks are sold only through Chevrolet dealerships, while GMC light trucks can be sold not only the Chevy dealers but also by any other GM-related dealer. These days, with the demise of the Pontiac and Saturn brands, that leaves only Buick and Cadillac, but Saturn/GMC used to be a common combination.
But was it founded for British people in Britain to do business in the Far East, or was it founded for British people in the Far East to do business there?
Anyway, that was a long time ago. I would guess that, before it acquired the Midland, HSBC was unambiguously an Asian bank (in as much as large banks “belong” to any region). Nowadays, I guess it’s perceived as a British bank in Britain. How it’s perceived elsewhere, though…
I was going to say that. Oh well, I still have TLC.
It use to be The Learning Channel, of course, but since it has “19 Kids and Counting”, “Cake Boss”, “Kate + 8”, and a whole slew of non educational shows, they couldn’t call themselves that any more.
Yup, that’s right the abbreviation ISO was purposefully chosen because it doesn’t stand for anything. In English it should be IOS, in French it should be ION, and in German it should be DIN.
And has anyone who has worked with ISO certification can tell you, it doesn’t stand for very much.
I’d say there’s a key difference between acronyms that stand for something that is largely ignored and acronyms that used to stand for something but now have become an official name.
“AARP” would be an example of the latter. That is now the official name of the group that used to call itself the American Association of Retired Persons.
UTC is another one like that. It was chosen because it doesn’t match either of the normal acronyms in English or French. In English it should be CUT (Coordinated Universal Time) and in French TUC (temps universel coordonné).
Whoops, I missed that change. Anyway they forgot to protect the name so whenever they want to start a new, say, SAS Radisson Hotel, they have to ask the computer company for permission to use it (it was like that at one time, anyway).
(and BTW the full name was Scandinavian Airlines System).
This statement intrigued me, but I can’t seem to find any information about it. Do you have a source? I’m a little skeptical that SAS “forgot to protect the name.” That doesn’t seem to quite fit into the way that trademark law works.
That’s not quite correct. In German, DIN refers to its national standards body, the Deutsche Institut für Normung, which is a member of ISO. ISO itself is referred to as the Internationale Organisation für Normung, so the acronym would be ION.
