Where did the words “Nike” and “Swoosh” come from?
Nike, pronounced NI-KEY, is the winged goddess of victory according to Greek mythology. She sat at the side of Zeus, the ruler of the Olympic pantheon, in Olympus. A mystical presence, symbolizing victorious encounters, Nike presided over history’s earliest battlefields. A Greek would say, “When we go to battle and win, we say it is Nike.” Synonymous with honored conquest, Nike is the twentieth century footwear that lifts the world’s greatest athletes to new levels of mastery and achievement. The Nike ‘Swoosh’ embodies the spirit of the winged goddess who inspired the most courageous and chivalrous warriors at the dawn of civilization. The SWOOSH logo is a graphic design created by Caroline Davidson in 1971. It represents the wing of the Greek Goddess Nike. Caroline Davidson was a student at Portland State University interested in advertising. She met Phil Knight while he was teaching accounting classes and she started doing some freelance work for his company. Phil Knight asked Caroli
