Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili ("Anonymous Lombard Automobile Factory"). When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended. Alibaba Group – from the character Ali Baba from the Middle Eastern folk-tale collection One Thousand and One Nights because of its universal appeal. Alltel – from original company name Allied Telephone Company Alps Electric/Alpine Electronics – Katsutaro Kataoka founded Kataoka Electronics in a suburb of Tokyo in 1947. A subsidiary was established in the province of Tohoku, also known as the Tohoku Alps, as Tohoku Alps Co. Ltd. When Kataoka was seeking investment during the 1960s, he found that foreigners had difficulty pronouncing "Kataoka," and renamed his firm Alps Electric. Alpine Electronics was originally named Alps-Motorola as a joint venture in the Japanese car audio market and the Alpine name was adopted after Motorola divested its stake in 1978. Alstom – set up as Alsthom in 1928 by Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques and Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston, it changed the spelling to Alstom in 1997. AltaVista – Spanish for "high view" Altec Lansing – audio equipment company formed when Altec Service Company, whose name was an abbreviation of "all technical" (and which had promised to never make or sell audio equipment), acquired Lansing Manufacturing Company, named after James Bullough Lansing (also later the namesake of JBL (below), which he founded to compete with Altec Lansing as soon as his contract expired) Alza – from the name of the founder Alex Zaffaroni Amazon.com – founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company "Amazon" (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore. (Alternative: Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.) AmBev – American Beverage Company, the largest Brazilian beverage company and fourth in the world. In 2004 it merged with Interbrew to create InBev, which in turn purchased Anheuser-Busch in 2008 to form Anheuser-Busch InBev. AMC Theatres – American Multi-Cinema: the company pioneered multi-screen cinemas AMD – Advanced Micro Devices Amdahl Corporation – American mainframe computer company named after its founder, Dr. Gene Amdahl, formerly of IBM. It was taken over by Fujitsu in 1997. Amiga Corporation – original developers of the 16-bit Amiga computer chose the name, which means a 'female friend' in Spanish and Portuguese, because it