Possessive Company Names in Michigan

Michigan's history of possessive company names all began in the early 1900's with the Ford Motor Company. The Ford Motor Company was owned by Henry Ford and therefore the factory was known all over Michigan as Ford's Factory. If a person was asked where he or she worked the response would be, "I work at Ford's." Too keep things simple, in written communication the apostrophe was dropped, thus Ford Motor Company became Fords.



One thing always leads to another, hence Meijer became Meijers, Kroger became Krogers, and oddly, K-Mart became K-Marts (though we all know there is no K-Mart family, it is the Kresge family, so technically it should be K's-Mart).

Business Names Gone Bad

My kids have been acting up today, I would like to exchange them for some other kids please. Just kidding.

This must be a store where people take their kids' outgrown clothing and toys to exchange them, it can't possibly be where you take your kid to have a sex change.

I also recently heard about a swimming pool chemical company called Poolife. I can't imagine anyone would want to bring poo to life in their swimming pool. A double "L" would have been beneficial here.

There is an Internet business named Publishit.com. I wonder......do they only publish sh*t?

I'm sure there are many more poorly named businesses out there and I would love to hear about more so please send me your Business Names Gone Bad as a comment.

It just goes to show you that when someone is naming their new business, they should really take into consideration the way the spelling and words of the name can be reinterpreted.