Paris-based high-end apparel company, founded 1933, named for company co-founder René Lacoste (1904-1996).

U.S. car rental company, according to company history founded 1946 at Willow Run Airport in Detroit by U.S. businessman Warren Avis and named for him.

1998, proprietary name of drug manufactured by Pfizer company.

dominant online service of the late 1990s, initialism (acronym) of America Online, a company name attested from late 1989.

type of luxury automobile made by the Cadillac Automobile Company, established in 1902 by Detroit engine-maker Henry Martyn Leland and named for Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (1658-1730), French minor aristocrat and colonial governor who founded Detroit in 1701. The company was purchased by General Motors in 1909.

U.S. trademark name for PVC used as a cling-film, 1940, by Dow Chemical Company.

German manufacturing company, named for founder Max Braun, mechanical engineer in Frankfurt am Main (1921).

brand of typewriters manufactured by company founded in 1908 near Turin, Italy; named for founder, Camillo Olivetti.

U.S. abbreviation of Incorporated in company names (equivalent of British Ltd.), first attested 1904.

1926, American English, originally Levi's, from the name of the original manufacturer, Levi Strauss and Company of San Francisco. The Bavarian-born Strauss had been a dry-goods merchant in San Francisco since 1853; his innovation was the copper rivets at strain points, patented in 1873 according to the company. A cowboy's accessory at first, hip or fashionable from c. 1940s.