Name Origins

One of the things that's always fascinated me is to find out why certain things are named the way they are. For example, the gasoline company "Esso" was named that way after the breakup of the Standard Oil monopoly (hint: what are the initials of Standard Oil?).

Well, the reason for the name Upsead comes from a play on words from Chinese. Originally, I had intended to head to Asia by transferring within my firm to one of the offices in China, most likely Shanghai. If you take each of the words of Shanghai (上海) and translate each one individually you would get "up" (上) and "sea" (海). Put the words together and you get "upsea" as the combo. (Note: originally I mistakenly thought the second character was "ocean" and set out to brand everything "upoceaned", but after much amusement from M, I was quickly set straight on the correct translation.)

Okay, now that you know about "upsea", where'd the "d" come from? Well, I figured it'd make more sense to make this a past tense verb to avoid any confusion with the city. Hence "upsead".