1995: Call us Ramboll
At the company’s 50th jubilee, the company celebrated that they had gone from being two good friends and partners with an idea, to being an international consulting company with more than 2000 employees.
However, since the merger with B. Højlund Rasmussen in 1991, the company’s name had been Rambøll, Hannemann & B. Højlund Rasmussen, much to the despair of the company’s telephone ladies.
“Our telephone ladies were sad and tired of repeating all three names all day long. So we agreed to shorten the name to Rambøll”, Børge Rambøll explained.
Since the beginning, Børge Rambøll’s philosophy, influence and presence had become a core part of the company and it was decided that it would be natural to name the company after him. To ease the local use and understanding of the name, it was decided to introduce ‘the key-board rule’, meaning that the Danish ‘ø’ will be transcribed to the nearest local letter in each language that in logic and simple way replaces the ‘ø’. So as examples in English and Finnish it becomes: Ramboll, in German and Swedish it becomes: Ramböll and in Danish and Norwegian: Rambøll in written text.
The new company logo was designed so that for those who know, the reference to the original proper name is clear, but the local pronunciation is just natural and easy in all our languages.
The name was tested in countries all over the world and luckily with positive results. In India they specifically liked the name, as “Ram” is the name of one of the Gods and therefore Ramboll was a friend of Ram. As a result, the company had a new name that could work internationally and the telephone ladies were content.