But in the 1960s things started to change. Xerox was one of the first companies to have an artificial name not related to the founders or the product. This has become a huge tide. Or Astrazeneca and Novartis, two companies that have announced a merger. Only a naming consultant could guess at the roots of these names and no one outside of their industry would know what they do.
Synthetic words are now all the rage.
For an excellent article on the absurdity of naming see The Name Game in Salon . Words become associated with things. Before Xerox, the company, one might have mistakenly thought that Xerox was the name of the Persian king who was defeated at Marathon. But the copier company forever associated the name Xerox with plain paper copying. If Agilent is successful they will eventually have the same brand recognition.