History of Mercedes Benz logo

Benz was founded by karl benz in the year 1890's. the name "Mercedes" came about in 1900. The modern Mercedes-Benz traced its lineage to a 1926 merger of two car companies, Daimler-Motored-Gesellschaft or DMG, founded by Gottlieb Daimler along with Wilhelm Maybach, and Benz & Cie, founded by Karl Benz. Both Daimler and Benz worked independently to invent internal combustion-powered automobiles. Their factories were actually just 60 miles apart, yet they didn't know of each other's early work. In 1926, however, the two companies merged into Daimler-Benz.

A wealthy European businessman and racing enthusiast named Emil Jellinek began selling Daimler's cars. He wanted a faster car, and specified a new engine to be designed by Maybach and to be named after his 10-year-old daughter's nickname, Mercédès or Spanish for "Mercy".
Jellinek was quite a character. However, as he actually sold a lot of cars, he was tolerated and even listened to. Later, Jellinek would add Mercedes to his own and he became Emil Jellinek-Mercedes.

The star in Daimler's logo came from an old postcard where Gottlieb Daimler had drawn a star above the picture of his house and wrote that "this star would one day shine over his own factory to symbolize prosperity." The three-pointed star symbolized Daimler's ambition of making vehicles "on land, on water and in the air."

After the merger, a new logo was designed. It combined the symbols of the two companies: the three-pointed star of DMG and the laurel wreath of Benz.There's a dispute on the origin of the name "Mercedes. Mercedes is a girl's name of Spanish origin meaning "Mercy." It was taken from the Virgin Mary's liturgical title "Maria de las Mercedes".

In Latin 'mercedes' originally meant 'wages' or 'ransom'.
In Christian theology, Christ's sacrifice is regarded as a 'ransom for the sins of mankind', hence an 'act of ransom' was seen as identical with an 'act of mercy