The Mercedes: A Car With A Girl's Name

Mercedes-Benz is a type of car made by the German company Daimler-Benz and is still sometimes called just "Mercedes." A Mercedes-Benz costs a lot of money. The symbol of a Mercedes-Benz is very famous. It is a three-pointed star inside of a circle and was designed by one of the men who started the company, Gottlieb Daimler. The three points of the star stand for land, air and sea because Daimler's engines were used not only in cars and trucks but in airplanes and boats. The symbol was first used in 1909.Mercedes cars are thought as very strong and well-built, bought especially by rich people, successful business people and political leaders.

The Girl Behind The Car

Adriana Manuela Ramona Jellinek called Mercédès was the daughter of Austrian automobile entrepreneur Emil Jellinek and his wife Rachel Goggmann Cenrobert. She was born on September 16, 1889 and named as a term of endearment Mercedes since the name Mercédès means "gifts" or "favours" in Spanish. Her mother Rachel died 4 years after her birth. Even so, her father, Emil Jellinek, came to believe the name Mercedes brought good fortune and called all his properties after it. One of his sons wrote: “He was as superstious as the ancient Romans.”
Mercédès is best known for her father having Daimler's Mercedes line of cars named after her, beginning with the Mercedes 35 hp model of 1901. Also, at the 1902 Paris Automobile exhibition, her father hung a large picture of her. Mercédès lived in Vienna, and was notorious for marrying twice scandalously. She played music and had a good soprano voice, but never shared her father's passion for automobiles. She died at the age of 39 in 1929 from bone cancer.

In the UK, a Mercedes is informally called a Merc, and in the US it is informally called a Benz. In American English, Merc is an informal name for a car called the Mercury, made by the Ford company.