Crayola is one of those brand names that just stands out from the crowd, and they certainly dominate their own particular market. However, it is also one of those names where you can perhaps sit and wonder as to what the origins are since it does, at first, appear to be a nonsensical name.
But, as in most cases, the explanation itself is far more straightforward to understand than you would perhaps expect. For this, we need to go to France in order to get to the root of Crayola.
The rather simple explanation is that it combines two different French words, ‘craie’ and ‘ola’ and the literal translation means ‘oily chalk’. It means this because the ‘craie’ part means chalk, and ‘ola’ translates as oily. When you look at it from that perspective, then it really is pretty easy to see how a small leap in the imagination led to the creation of the name ‘Crayola.’