Talk:Pierre Omidyar/Archive 1

Benificence
"The reason that he started eBay was because he wanted to see what would happen if everyone had equal access to venues of trade."

Uh... all right. Sounds a little more like the new corporate goal of eBay, not why he would originally start it.

eBay Name
I find it interesting that the word for "sale" in Islamic Finance is "bay'"  and that Pierre Omidyar is Iranian. Putting two and two together, its seems logical that eBay would be a combination of the words electronic and sale (bay'). Thus translated from Arabic, eBay would mean e-sale or more loosely e-commerce or e-trade. This seems more likely than that the name is a tribute to the Ebola virus. Comments? Dtaw2001 12:43, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Iranians don't speak Arabic, they speak Persian. The word for "sale" in Persian is not "bay". So your inference is incorrect.

- The fact that Iranians speak Persian does not mean that Omidyar could not borrow the word from Islamic. I find it interesting and think that this could be the intended meaning of it.

Islamic is a religion not a language or ethnic group. Many Muslims do not even speak Arabic. If you can find a reference for Omidayar borrowing an Arabic word and incorporating it into his company title then please post it. RecentlyAnon (talk) 19:22, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Pierre was living in San Jose, CA at the time that he started Auction Watch, then renamed it to eBay. San Jose is part of the Bay Area in local parlance. It is much more likely that the name originates from the Bay Area, than an imported word. Gstein (talk) 22:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Uh? As noted by the eBay article, eBay is a contraction of "Echo Bay", which was Pierre's consulting group. I think he said it didn't mean anything in particular and he just chose it because it sounded kinda cool, but I don't have a source handy for that. The service was originally called AuctionWeb and was hosted at Echo Bay's domain, but later ended up taking over that name. --24.80.163.219 (talk) 02:35, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Omidyar fellowship
Pierre and Pam Omidyar have contributed a generous sum to create the Omidyar fellowship at the Santa Fe Institute: http://www.santafe.edu/education/fellowships/omidyar-postdoctoral/ Sun, Dec 05, 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agilint (talk • contribs) 10:18, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

eBay and Later Career
I don't understand the sentence that says that Pierre wanted to avoid making a second trip to Sacramento when he realised the name 'echobay' had already been taken. Why would he need to travel to Sacramento for a second time? Why did he need to travel to Sacramento originally? No mention is made of this..... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.184.233.48 (talk) 22:37, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Henderson, not Las Vegas
Why does someone keep changing his residence from Henderson to Las Vegas? Yes, Henderson is next to Las Vegas, but this is like saying someone living in Alexandria VA is living in Washington DC. They're next to each other, but are not the same place. --jpgordon:==( o ) 17:00, 28 December 2012 (UTC)