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Comment by blue1 | Hacker News Reader

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blue1·

Shell (the oil company) is actually named Royal Dutch Shell. For a moment I was confused by the title.

According to wikipedia it is really named after sea shells.

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One would think that the logo of the company would be enough to make sure everyone knows where the name comes from :)

At first I though it was kind of macabre, but then I got reminded that it's basically standard practice, exterminators frequently have bugs as their logo, bacon packages have happy pigs and so on.

The shell logo dates back to the 19th century, when Shell traded in decorative Japanese seashells. You can read more of the logo history at (Dutch) https://www.shell.nl/over-ons/netherlands/history.html

I was very confused by the title. I was wondering if Uber was doing some sort of tax avoidance deal involving gasoline or something.

It's not just Shell, it's an honorary title for a lot of old 'notable' companies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninklijk

I think they were referring to the fact that the title mentioned "Dutch shell", which is almost the complete name of Shell-the-company.

Weirdly, I read this whole thread and assumed people were referring to shell in the form of an empty sea shell, representing an analogy to remnants of a now-dead life form. Which is what crude oil pretty much is.

I didn't even think "shell corporation" until I read your comment.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_corporation - not to be confused with "shelf companies" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_corporation) which are structures that have been artificially aged to avoid risk assessments based on how old the company is.

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