KaZaK, also known as the “hound of space”, was immortalized in Kurt Vonnegut’s book The Sirens of Titan in 1959. To founder Jerry Fanucci, an aerospace engineer with a PhD from MIT, the name sounded magic. Fanucci came up with it 10 years before he founded the company in 1992.
While visiting Sony in Japan, Dr. Fanucci attended a presentation on the principles of choosing a good corporate name. There he learned what makes a good company name, including that it should include the letters k, z and x; it shouldn’t mean anything as to limit future products; and it should evoke a certain feeling. Dr. Fanucci was reading The Sirens of Titan at the time, in which the protagonist and his faithful dog, Kazak, travel together throughout the universe. It was then that Dr. Fanucci decided that when he founded his own company, it would be named KaZaK.
Some may call the decision to name his company KaZaK “foreshadowing”, but KaZaK Composites, Inc. eventually went on to pultrude composite parts for an instrument boom on the Cassini spacecraft, which dropped a probe on Titan. Since this was a scenario that could have been straight out of The Sirens of Titan, Dr. Fanucci knew the magic was real.