It seems that a lot of companies of a certain vintage use the word “general” as the distinuishing part of their names – General Motors, General Electric, General Mills, General Foods, General Dynamics, General Cinema, General Telephone, General Tire and Rubber.
Why was this so popular as a name for a major company? “General” means, well, nothing special. “We’re so big, we couldn’t be bothered to think up a name.”
How many companies today would choose to call themselves Nothing Special Motors, Just Your Average Electric, I Don’t Want to Be Specific Mills, Regular Foods, Widely Available Tires.
So the primary meaning of “general” is not “nothing special” (meanings 4 and 5 above), it is “all-encompassing” (meanings 1, 2, and 3 above). " General" is meant to indicate a very large and diversified company, and companies with “general” their names usually want to show that they cover the entire field for which they are named, not just a small or specialized par of it. “General Motors” builds all kinds of motor vehicles; “General Electric” all kinds of electronic equipment; etc.
Sorry to nitpick, but this is one bit of ignorance that doesn’t get fought often enough and creeps into the posts of even the most erudite and knowlegeable Dopers. Merriam-Webster is a historical dictionary; it presents meanings in the order in which they are first known to have been recorded, not in order of importance. “All-encompassing” is the “primary” meaning of general only in a strictly literal and historical sense–it was the first. [Just to get technical, where a defenition consists of numbered senses one or more of which is subdivided into meanings designated by a letter, each grouping is seperately ordered. In other words, meaning 5b in the above entry for general, “concerned or dealing with universal rather than particular aspects,” may have been historically preceded by sense 6 or by both 6 and 7. Furthermore, not all recorded senses are presented, esp. in an abridged dictionary, so sense 1, “involving, applicable to, or affecting the whole,” may not be the earliest meaning of general, only the earliest meaning to common enough to be presented here.]
Even in dictionaries that do not follow that convention, the first meaning is not necessarily the most important or the one most people will recognise; it is likely merely to be the one for which the lexicographer has the most citations.
Most of these names date back to the consolidation of the industry into a single company. This was the age of the trusts.
By the end of the 19th century, efficiencies of scale began to be meaningful for companies that were suddenly expanding nationally. Larger companies could compete better in many ways. Smaller firms were less efficient, couldn’t afford to bring in the latest processes, scale up to bigger factories, or drive as good deals with railroads and other transportation services. They also tended to compete by undercutting each others prices in ruinous price wars. And, frankly, larger firms could bribe legislators better.
Either the firms were bought out, as with Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust, or were driven out of business, legally or otherwise, as with the steel and railroad consolidations.
The resulting conglomeration, often nearly a monopoly, had hold of every part of the business, from mining raw materials to delivering finished products to the consumers. General didn’t mean “nothing special” in any way. Just the opposite. It meant that they could give you every aspect of the business.
You’re right–nobody would! I doubt that there are many, if any, businesses putting “General” in their names today. The examples you gave were named long ago, and at least a couple of them don’t exist any more. The passion today is for customization, specialization, branding, and unique products and services.
But it wasn’t always so. As Exapno says, in the early Twentieth Century, bland integrated conglomerates were considered cool. Being a “General” was something you bragged about–your products were standard, of uniform and dependable quality, available everywhere, and as cheap as possible due to economies of scale. Nowadays, after two or three generations of bigness and blandness, this doesn’t get people excited any more.
The idea still has some appeal, apparently. I just did a quick check. Limiting myself to the NYSE and the NASDAQ, I found:
GGP - General Growth Properties, a REIT specializing in government leases, est. 1986
GMR - General Maritime Corp, 1997
GNCMA - General Communications, Inc., 1979 (symbol GCI belongs to Gannet)
BGC - General Cable, 1992
There are also a raft of “General <somethings>” on the OTCBB, pink sheets, Toronto exchange, etc.
Then, we have the late, lamented “General Magic”, which I always thought was a rather clever and playful corporate name:
Excuse me, GGP is mostly a retail REIT, with a side helping of some other property types. I was thinking I had heard of them, and didn’t look that closely at the description.