NEW YORK -- Way back in the days before nylon, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
Single-letter tickers were the norm then. But the D that Du Pont naturally aspired to was already taken -- by whom, company archivists aren't sure.
So, Du Pont took a long look at its legal name and decided on DD. One D from 'du' and one D from 'de'.
Ticker symbols are more than convenient ways to record stock trades or look up company information. They can give you a little history and possibly tell you something about the personalities of corporations.
One-letter symbols often indicate longevity and that carries a bit of prestige. T belongs to AT&T; Corp., F to Ford Motor Co., S to Sears, Roebuck & Co.
Gillette Co. waited for years to get G. Historically, it belonged to the old Greyhound Corp. Then in 1991, Greyhound Dial changed its name to Dial and its ticker symbol to DL. Gillette got its chance.
Companies that can't stand out by getting a one-letter ticker use their imaginations. They give us, for instance, the happy hour tickers, BUD (Anheuser-Busch Cos.) and VO (Seagram Co.).
LUV stands for Southwest Airlines Co., which operates out of Love Field in Dallas. BKS belongs to Barnes & Noble Inc., the bookstore chain.
In 1987, when it listed its Dreyfus Strategic Municipals Inc. closed-end bond fund on the NYSE, Dreyfus Corp. choose to identify it with LEO. After Dreyfus' lion, of course. The company's imagination had improved over the years. When it listed its own shares, the best it could do was DRY. LEO now is owned by MEL, Mellon Bank Corp., which bought Dreyfus Corp. this year.
Franklin Resources Inc., the mutual fund company, had the marketing savvy to pick BEN as its ticker.
There's no mistaking some tickers: GM, IBM, GE. But some are misleading. PET, for instance, doesn't stand for Pet Inc. and its Pet evaporated milk. It belongs to Pacific Enterprises, a natural gas utility.
LIZ is what you expect, Liz Claiborne Inc., the clothing maker. But LIL isn't. It's Long Island Lighting Co., a utility.
When you see the symbol OIL, you would expect at least Atlantic Richfield Co. if not Exxon Corp. What you get is Triton Energy Corp., an industry flyweight. Triton doesn't quite have the cheek of Callaway Golf Co. Chairman Ely Callaway, however. The ticker for his golf equipment company is ELY.
Younger stockbrokers might be confused by some older tickers. Why, for instance, does GLW mean Corning Inc.? Old-timers remember that the company once was called Corning Glass Works.
There are many surprises about stock tickers. You would think, for example, that over the years, companies would have gone to any length -- perhaps even changing their names -- to get A and go to the head of the class.
But A belongs to the American depositary receipts of Attwoods PLC, a British waste collector that Browning-Ferris Industries wants to take over. And B stands for Barnes Group Inc., a metals fabricator with annual sales of $502 million.
Single-letter symbols are no guarantee of success, of course. USAir Group Inc. owns U, but the airline is best-known for its high costs and heavy losses.
What's most surprising is that some companies don't seem to know the origin of their ticker symbols. Why does KO stand for Coca-Cola Co.? How did Woolworth Corp.'s ticker get to be Z? How come X was the ticker for U.S. Steel Corp., now called USX-US Steel Group Inc.?
Public relations people at all three companies are still trying to find out. The only information uncovered so far is that Coca-Cola's ticker once was CCO and that KO dates to 1923. If anybody can help out these folks, please give them a call.