The story
- Ancient Greek · derived fromᾰ̓́στρον“star”
- English todayAstraZeneca
From AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company that created the vaccine. The company name was formed by the merger of Astra AB and Zeneca. Astra is from Ancient Greek ᾰ̓́στρον (ắstron, “star”), whereas Zeneca, the company stated, “is an invented name, created by an agency instructed to find a name which began with a letter from either the top or bottom of the alphabet and was phonetically memorable, of no more than three syllables and did not have an offensive meaning in any language.”
Words from the same roots
Ancient Greekᾰ̓́στρον all →
disastrousapastron
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.