I did no know that. I always assumed that the car was named after the sport, particularly since VW also sells a car called the Polo in Europe. That makes it seem like they’re going for a sports theme (sports rich people play, in particular).
In America there was also the Plymouth Breeze. And also in the category of meteorological phenomena, the Dodge Stratus and Chrysler Cirrus. Those three were collectively known as the “Chrysler Cloud Cars” to car enthusiasts.
Monterey. That could be directly from Spanish or (and I think more likely since it was marketed at English speakers and the marketers were very likely monolingual English speakers) from the city in California. But car marketers are not really in the habit of giving the derivation of their model names, so who knows.
Your post let me rethink it, but I googled “What was the VW Golf named after” in German and found several clear cites that it was after “gulf”, or rather precisely after the gulf stream which should give the car an air of speed and strength. Sorry, I got no English cite.
And I’m not sure if the VW Polo was named after the sport or rather after the Italian name, like in Marco Polo. Golf and polo as luxury sports would have been rather unfitting as the Polo and the Golf used to be the smallest, everyday cars VW sold and really not belonging to the luxury segment.
The VW Scirocco was along the same theme, so that strengthens with “wind” idea.
But on the other hand the Golf-based pickup was called the Caddy in some foreign markets, which seems like another piece of evidence for the sport idea.
Good point. My theory is that the guys from VW knew that many people thought their car was named after the sport, and when the pick-up version was released a few years later, ran with it.
Gulf or sport, I think we all can agree that naming the car Golf was a genius move. The model still gets built (8th generation?) and is one of the best sold cars in automobile history. Most Germans of my (born in 1968) generation have owned at least one VW Golf in their lifetime. I had a 1977 Golf I (my first car, bought in 1988) and a 1991 Golf III, both good cars.
I’m the same age, and my first car (given to me in 1984 by my parents), was a 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit. Same vehicle, but different nameplate in the U.S. for some reason at that time. (I think Golf is a much better name, though.)
I loved it (mainly because any vehicle was better than no vehicle), and it successfully got me through high school, then halfway across the country to attend university, then my first year in college.
Then it started to spontaneously disassemble itself: the driver-side door handle came off, along with the rear view mirror and the entire hand brake assembly. That’s around the time I traded it in. The dealer (a family friend) said the only thing of any value in the vehicle at that point was the aftermarket sound system. 
(Which I thought was rather unfair, since I drove it under its own power to the dealer.)
How about an entire car company? The American Motors Corporation (AMC) was named after the Gulf of America.
(flees)
Was Rabbit a nickname for the Golf like Beetle for the original Volkswagen, or the official name in the US? Nobody has ever called it “Kaninchen” in Germany, while everybody knows what a car the “Käfer” (beetle) is.
The official marketing name in the US and Canada, at least for the first-generation Golf, in the '70s and early '80s:
It was the official model name in the U.S., with a nameplate on the back of the vehicle. And the nameplate included a cute picture of a rabbit running at top speed:
I never even heard of a Golf until several years later when they renamed the vehicle in the U.S.
That’s interesting, So the VW marketing crew probably thought “Hey, our former model sold like hot cakes in the US under the unofficial name Beetle (or Bug) in the US, why not sell its successor under the name of another cute animal?”
VW also gave the Passat a different name in the US. Two different names, actually. The first generation was called the Dasher here. Then they called the second generation the Quantum. Then they finally started calling it the Passat from the third generation on.
Australian car models also include:
Holden Monaro
Ford Territory
Canadian model in the 1960s - Pontiac Laurentian.
The Turbo Injection badge was much better:
I noticed that online when doing a search for the original nameplate! 
But thought it had to be a joke because it seems pretty risqué.
…And looking at it closer now I’m convinced it has to be a joke.
It was, but they were on a lot of cars.
I forgot two contemporary German Ford models named after places, the Granada and the Capri.