Most of us heard the word ‘covid’ last year, in reference to the coronavirus that caused the ongoing pandemic, but it’s actually the name of an Arizona company that has been operating for about four decades.

Covid.inc is a company based in Tempe, Arizona. It specializes in high-quality audiovisual wall plates and cables, and sells its products all over the world. It has been in business for decades, but it as only last year that it  started making news headlines, for obvious reasons. Covid.inc CEO, Norm Carson, recalls the first time he learned that they shared the name of the disease that caused the latest pandemic in human history. He and his team were at a big audiovisual show in Amsterdam in February 2020, on the day that the name Covid-19 was uttered for the first time, and Carson remembers posing for countless pictures in front of his company’s sign at their booth.

“We went in that day thinking we’d see some customers, do some training and it’d be a regular day. And then before you knew it, they had announced the name,” Carson told NPR.

The company’s founders originally wanted to name it Video Company, or Vidco for short, but there were already a number of other companies by that name, so one UPS driver suggested that they name it Covid instead, and the name stuck. In hindsight, maybe they could have done a bit more brainstorming.

Luckily, Covid sells its products mostly through distributors an dealers, so most people don’t even know it exist, but Carson admits that sharing the name of the world’s most talked-about subject has led to some funny situations. For one, people randomly drive through the gates after seeing the sign on the company’s building and ask for Covid-19 tests. And then there are those who crack jokes and ask to suggest the company’s new tagline.

“You know, we get a lot of customers who always want to come up with our new taglines,” the Covid.inc CEO said. “‘Covid, we had it first.’ Or ‘The only thing that’s contagious is our quality.’ We get all kinds of jokes from people. And a lot of people call and they talk to us and they just, ‘can you believe that?’ And you just smile a little bit and say, ‘yeah,’ and you just tell some of the stories that’s happened because of it.”

Despite the unfortunate name coincidence, Covid.inc has no intention of changing its name.