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About OANDA, the name

Etymology:

  • It does not stand for anything. And even though OANDA always appears in uppercase, it isn’t an acronym.

  • By coincidence, it happens that “O Anda” means “just in time” or “at that moment” in Turkish. We like that. Perhaps “ahead of the times” would have been better.

  • Furthermore, we found that OANDA is the title of a novel by Laurids Valdemar Bruun (1864 - 1935), an early 19th-century Danish writer. OANDA is the story of a daring heroine and her many spirited adventures.

    We found a German translation. For those who read German, a sample of the book has been provided for your reading pleasure:

  • We have also discovered that OANDA happens to be the name for an international association of anxious people.

  • OANDA also happens to be an African surname, but we are not an African company. Having said that, the grandfather of one of our founders, founded and ran a company in Ghana many years ago.

Pronunciation:

OANDA name phonetic

Sounds like Rwanda and it
also rhymes with Panda.

Derivations:

  • Interestingly, OINOANDA, sometimes written as OENOANDA was an ancient city in Asia Minor: present day Turkey.

    map of Turkey
    Courtesy of Worldatlas.com

    It is famous because it is the home of a massive limestone wall, the largest of its kind, on which the third century biographer Diogenes Laertius inscribed the history and teachings of the philosopher, Epicurus.

    The wall was roughly 80 metres long and more than 3 metres high, containing approximately 25,000 words.

  • Along the Onondaga Lake in Central New York, the Onondaga tribe use the phrase “OHANDA dehkahwhi” to say “strawberry”. Translated literally, the words mean “fields of fire.”

  • ONDA means “waves” in Spanish and Italian.

  • OYANDA means “future” in Tajik. Possibly, the future of forex.

  • Finally, OVANDO ODANAH, and OLANTA are small towns in the United States.

Zeitgeist:

  • When you tell people that a word has no meaning, they just don’t believe you.

  • In response, OANDA has come to mean “everything forex” to many.

  • Furthermore, Google’s search engine has noted that those who search the term “currency” also search for OANDA.

  • google keywords


  • Then there’s all the good things our clients say about us.

  • So, where OANDA didn’t mean anything before, 15 years later, it’s now synonymous with forex, currencies, trust, fairness, innovation…

OANDA's new look & feel

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