Company

The Late Latin companio combined com (with, together) and panis (bread) to describe a messmate, a person you shared a meal with. The word first appears in the sixth-century Frankish Lex Salica and is likely a translation of a Germanic word, the Gothic gahlaiba, literally "with-loaf."1

Old French transformed it into compagnie, meaning society, friendship, or a body of soldiers. When the word entered Middle English in the twelfth century, it carried both senses: the warmth of companionship and the structure of an organized group.2

The commercial meaning, a group of people united to conduct business, developed in the fourteenth century alongside the rise of trade guilds. The abbreviation "Co." dates from the 1670s. By the sixteenth century, company had acquired its full modern business sense, describing a legal entity formed to pursue profit.3

The East India Company, chartered in 1600, and the Dutch East India Company (VOC), chartered in 1602, were among the first to operate as joint-stock companies, pooling capital from multiple investors. The VOC is often cited as the first company to issue publicly traded shares.4

The word's military sense survives in modern armies, where a company is a unit of roughly 100 to 250 soldiers. Its root meaning survives in the word companion, which still carries the etymological memory of shared bread. The legal entity that now employs billions of people worldwide takes its name from an act as intimate as eating together.5