Michael Dell could have done worse naming his company.

KeePass, PiKock, Vungle and Foodler -- all real startup names that go down in the nerd encyclopedia as the worst names ever for tech startups. So how did Michael Dell end up calling his company Dell? It may surprise you.

If Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell had his way, the company might still be named its original PCs Limited. That's the name Dell gave his company back in the early '80s when he was still building PCs out of his dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin.

[Related: Dell: An Amazing Journey From A To Z] 

But then along came a lawyer, as Dell recalled it during the Dell Channel Partner Summit in November in Austin, Texas. He was responding to a partner that asked: "If your name had been Smith, what would you have named your company?"

"I was still working out of my dorm room and I had a customer who was a lawyer," Dell recalled. "And the customer says to me 'Oh, you should incorporate.' And I said, 'Why do I want to do that?' "

Begrudgingly, Dell said he struck a deal with the lawyer. He would upgrade his PC's hard drive and Dell would have his PCs Limited name incorporated. "So I go, 'OK, fine. It's a deal. I'll update your system with a hard drive, you incorporate my business and we are done.'"

And, of course, they were not done.

"I install the hard drive and he comes back to me and says there are two problems," Dell said.

The attorney told Dell the first problem was the name was too generic so he took it upon himself to name the company Dell Computer Corporation, Doing Business As PCs Limited.

NEXT: "OK, whatever."