The Audi Brand Name

A story about picking a brand name that is catchy, marketable, and short.

The iconic Audi circles - no need for a name; everyone knows what brand that is (photo courtesy of Marcel Strauß at Unsplash)

The first car I purchased with my own hard-earned money was an Audi A4. As a matter of fact, after hours of haggling and much to the dismay of the slick sales rep, I even purchased it with a credit card, just to make the point to myself that I had finally made it. It was rare model, dark blue with tinted windows, 6-cylinder stick-shift, all-wheel-drive. It was an amazingly well-built car: German engineering and solidity. When I asked a mechanic friend to check it before my purchased and I described it to him, he said not to worry, that car is built like a tank. It was also a fun high-performing car to drive.

Most people love their first car, and so did I. However, in all the years I owned that car, I never wondered about the name. As a matter of fact, I made that purchase decision almost entirely on the specs, very recent reviews, and to be frank, a supposed prestige factor. Had I done a bit more homework; I probably should have known that the company had quite a checkered history.

The Origin of Audi

The original company was founded by August Horch in 1899 in Germany. This was well before the world wars. Germany was still ascending as a world power and its scientific research, and consequently its manufacturing, was quickly rising in the eyes of the world.

After the turn of the century, the company name changed several times from A. Horch & Cie., to August Horch & Cie. Motorwagenwerke AG, and then to August Horch Automobilwerke GmbH. Those were typical company names at the time, but as you can imagine they did not roll off the tongue, even in their native German language. They just were not memorable or marketable names.

After some in-fighting and a lawsuit at the company, the German Supreme Court concluded that the “Horch” brand name belonged to his business partners and not August Horch, even if he was the original founder. The automobile phenom formerly known as Horch could no longer use his own name for what remained of his company.

From this point forward the company would continue to be a conglomerate of several subdivisions that combined to make cars under different names. In the 1920s the company had several commercial successes with cars named the “Type A” and the “Type B.” While this was a popular thing to do for car manufacturers at the time, it hardly made Horch or his company stand out from the pack. While the iconic Ford Model T comes to mind as a car named after the company owner, Henry Ford, way back in 1908.

In the 1920s Horch left his company for a government position in the Ministry of Transportation. He remained close to the company, but different divisions of the company were sold off to another manufacturer called Dampf-Kraft-Wagen (DKW). Later in the 1930s, the company merged with another manufacturer, Wanderer, that was part of Auto Union AG and the company even used engines from French manufacturer Peugeot. Sacrebleu!

As the 1930s neared the start of WWII, the company began manufacturing equipment and vehicles for the German military. As such, during the war, the manufacturing plants became targets for Allied bombing raids. WWII devastated the German automobile industry. At the end of the war, Horch’s company plants were captured by the Soviets who promptly converted them to producing such commercial successes (not) as the “IFA F8” and “IFA F9” car models, and the commercial firebrand, the “Trabant.”

As a result, the company that Horch founded and that was now known in West Germany as Auto Union, was divested from the plants behind the Iron Curtain. They did however hold onto one important piece of intellectual property: the name Audi, which had been adopted long before the war.

Photo of the 1923 Audi Type E; note the use of the Audi brand name above the grill (This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license / Wikipedia)

So where did the name come from?

Back in 1910, having been barred by the courts from using his own family name for the company, and consequently not being very good at picking catchy commercial names, Horch called an emergency meeting in a crowded apartment of one of his partners in Zwickau, Germany. The partner was Franz Fikentscher, another one of those names that do not roll off the tongue, even in German - consequently, that name was also as an option for the car company as well.

While they were deliberating the future of the company and the name of it, Franz’s son was studying Latin in a corner of the room. It must have been a long and loud meeting because having been quite fed up with it, the son finally blurted out: “audiatur et altera pars: wouldn’t it be a good idea to call it Audi instead of Horch!”

Having heard these men go on about why the name Horch, which is German for “hark,” was no longer possible, why not use the Latin translation of it: audi? He literally meant to say: “Hark, translate the damn word into Latin, already” …and let me finally study in peace!

The partners looked at each other in bewilderment and then agreed that this was an excellent company name. On April 25th, 1910 the Audi name was officially adopted, albeit with the exquisitely conforming -Automobilwerke GmbH Zwickau attached to the end of it. They did take a bold leap in 1915 when they shortened the official name to Audiwerke AG Zwickau.

Post WWII Audi automobile, when the name was Auto Union (photo courtesy of Yves Moret via Unsplash)

As was mentioned above, Audiwerke AG Zwickau continued to rely on multiple partnerships and cross-manufacturing agreements with other manufacturers and continued to be overshadowed by names like Wanderer and Auto Union. The company was also co-owned by more household named companies like Daimler-Benz and Volkswagen. The unique Audi name was not officially used to actively market the brand until well after the war, starting in the 1970s, when the name finally became the marketing name for new models.

Steps to Take for Finding a Good Name

Arriving at the Audi name was essentially a congruence of accidental events that just so happened to occur at the same time: the disastrous lawsuit, unfortunate German names, the emergency meeting, the crowded apartment, and the son studying Latin in the same room. Such a lining-up of factors is often credited as the right ingredients for great historical discoveries, from Isaac Newton’s Apple to Wilhelm Roentgen’s X-ray. As such, it can also be the source of great company names.

I often hear people say that there are no great names available anymore for their start-up companies. I also often hear people say that they cannot find a name that isn’t registered as a web address. Those issues also confounded Steve Jobs of Apple and Jack Dorsey of Twitter, but that did not stop them from coming up with names that are now so common they have become verbs.

The fact is that for every product name or company name there are hundreds of word combinations that still exist to come up with a clever name. The key is to create situations that increase your chances of finding one. This could involve multiple people, including people that may not work in your industry. This is a perfect example of diversity being a key factor.

Another important step is to make room for the idea to evolve. Great names are evolutionary. Asics is an acronym of a Latin saying meaning “a healthy soul in a healthy body,” and the software company Adobe was named after a creek behind the founder’s house. I am certain those ideas did not simply appear to them overnight.

Sometimes just a small tweak is necessary. Contrary to popular belief, Google does not mean a large number with 100 zeros. It is not even a word at all. The correct word is actually Googol, but that does not sound or look as good. The name needed to evolve to become the iconic name it is now.

Many company names are also made up from foreign phrases or from ancient languages. This is why those boring college Latin and Greek classes matter. If you did not study a foreign language, it might help to enlist the help of someone with a humanities background to figure out what a name could translate to… or if your name is Fikentscher, ask a short-tempered child who just happens to study Latin.

On that last point, children are the future, literally. They have a simple and direct way of looking at the world. They also tend to keep up with the latest trends, like the latest Lizzo scandal or what fragrance is Kourtney Kardashian’s favorite. Those may seem irrelevant details to us Facebook Boomers, but if you are looking to sell your products in the future, those are details that could make or break a company name.

Photo of the best-selling Audi RS5 at a recent auto show (this image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license / Wikipedia).