Many of the world’s prime firms have easy names. Steve Jobs named Apple whereas on a fruitarian weight loss program, and located the identify “fun, spirited and not intimidating.” Plus, it got here earlier than Atari within the phonebook. Microsoft is an amalgamation of the phrases “microcomputer” and “software,” whereas Walmart a mixture of the final identify of the superstore’s founder, Sam Walton, and “mart.”
Nvidia—which briefly held the title of probably the most priceless firm on this planet this previous week—challenges these easy branding conventions. The consonant-ridden identify and eerie, Nineteen Nineties-esque op-art brand recall its underdog, start-up roots moderately than its present actuality: a behemoth cornering the AI chips market.
No matter its unconventionality, Nvidia’s prominence calls for dialog, and dialog calls for pronunciation. So, what’s the appropriate option to pronounce Nvidia?
In response to its web site, Nvidia is pronounced “en-VID-eeyah,” not NUH-vid-eeyah, as many have referred to as it.
The place did the ‘Nvidia’ identify come from?
When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang began the corporate along with his pals Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem in 1993, they hashed out nearly each element of their new enterprise, apart from the identify. Sitting in a Palo Alto Denny’s—a venue chosen for its low-cost espresso and for Huang’s expertise working there in his youth—the three cofounders drew blanks for the title of their enterprise.
So, as they continued constructing, they merely named their information “NV” for subsequent model, Huang beforehand informed Fortune. When time got here to include the corporate, the three had been pressured to discover a identify. At first, they selected NVision, till they realized {that a} rest room paper producer already took the identify.
After going again to the drafting board, the cofounders scraped by all phrases with “NV” in them, till Huang advised Nvidia, riffing on the Latin phrase invidia, which means “envy.”
The identify labored as a result of the three had hopes to design such a strong graphics chip that it will make opponents, as Priem beforehand informed The New Yorker, “green with envy.”
The First ‘Nvidia‘
The primary “Nvidia” was Invidia, the Roman goddess of envy. Her coronary heart was “green with bile,” her tongue dripped poison, she had a “pallor smeared across her face, her entire body is gaunt, her eyesight squints at everything,” because the Roman poet Ovid describes her within the Metamorphosis.
Firm branding doesn’t ofter draw from Roman mythology, a lot much less from a determine so unseemly. And but, the envy motif seems to be littered all through the corporate’s merchandise. The eighth technology of its graphics processing items had the slogan “green with envy.”
Nvidia’s brand, a inexperienced, spiraling eye, might have additionally drawn inspiration from the primary Invidia. Her determine was related to a piercing gaze, an “evil eye” that casts a curse upon these she envies. Individuals of many religions nonetheless put on “evil eye” amulets, or recite prayers, to beat back the curse.
Many corporations now have purpose to be jealous of Nvidia. With a market cap of $3.1 trillion, unprecedented market focus and seemingly limitless development, Nvidia’s success is what each CEO goals of.
Huang might have foreseen this, and deliberately positioned envy on the forefront as a reminder of his opponents clawing at him. In response to The New Yorker, for years Huang opened each workers assembly with the phrases, “our company is 30 days from going out of business.”
Apparently, even after all of the success, the phrase stays the unofficial company motto.
