What in a Company's Name?

I've recently watched a video about the re-branding of American Airlines. They presumably paid their agency a fortune to come up with the idea of painting a big American flag on the tail and re-positioning the brand as "American" to replace the old "AA". Pretty lame!

It made me wonder though: is there any kind of pattern among the names of the best companies? I took a look at the 40 biggest firms by market cap on the S&P 500 and classified them by the origins of their name:

• Random - a variety of trivial reasons
• Descriptive - The core business is described in the name. E.g. "Theo's Pencil Company"
• Suggestive - a word that suggests some quality about the company
• Founder - named after the original founder
• Product - related to its core product, or re-branded to the same name as the product.

Here's what I came up with:

1. Founder - 33.8%
2. Descriptive - 28.8%
3. Random - 20%
4. Suggestive - 15%
5. Product - 7.5%

I wonder: if I started a new company tomorrow, and paid AA American's brand agency a million bucks to come up with a name, would they tell me to call it "Sanders"?