cisco folklore time:

At one point in time, the first letter in cisco Systems was a
lowercase ``c''. At present, various factions within the company have
adopted a capital ``C'', while fierce traditionalists (as well as some
others) continue to use the lowercase variant, as does the cisco
Systems logo. This FAQ has chosen to use the lowercase variant
throughout.

cisco is not C.I.S.C.O. but is short for San Francisco, so the story
goes.  Back in the early days when the founders Len Bosack and Sandy
Lerner and appropriate legal entities were trying to come up with a
name they did many searches for non similar names, and always came up
with a name which was denied. Eventually someone suggested ``cisco''
and the name wasn't taken (although SYSCO may be confusingly similar
sounding). There was an East Coast company which later was using the
``CISCO'' name (I think they sold in the IBM marketplace) they ended
up having to not use the CISCO abberviation.  Today many people spell
cisco with a capital ``C'', citing problems in getting the lowercase
``c'' right in publications, etc. This lead to at least one amusing
article headlined ``Cisco grows up''. This winter we will celebrate
our 10th year.

[This text was written in July of 1994 -jhawk]