Here's What Aldi's Name Actually Means

Aldi has legions of dedicated fans all around the world, and with 12,000 stores (give or take) and 203,600 employees (also, give or take), the story of the family-owned business is a pretty wild one. One thing to know about Aldi's German heritage is that the first was a little store in Essen, Germany, and brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht took over from their mother, Anna, in 1946. 

Today, if you head to Europe, you'll find two different Aldis. Depending on which country you're in, you'll either see the logos for Aldi Nord or Aldi Sud. At the same time they adopted the name Aldi, the brothers also divided the company in half in what's called the "Aldi equator." It passes between Essen and Mulheim, and they did it because they couldn't agree on whether or not they were going to sell cigarettes. Karl took over Aldi Sud, which didn't sell cigarettes and now operates in South Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, the U.K., the U.S., Australia, and China. Theo took Aldi Nord and sold cigarettes — along with his discount goods — in northern Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, and Spain.

Early photos of the store's locations show that it was identified by the family name of Albrecht, and it wasn't until the early 1960s that the brothers officially adopted the name Aldi. The reason was pretty straightforward: It's a shortened version of "Albrecht Diskont." "Diskont" is exactly what it sounds like and simply means discount in German.

Aldi split Germany in half when brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht split their empire, but the two entities do share things like a main website and, of course, the moniker of their last name and the German word for "discount." The split was a friendly one, and the brothers remained on such good terms that they decided to divide up the countries so they wouldn't be competing against each other anywhere. 

In addition to Germany, there's one notable exception to that. That's in the U.S., and Aldi Sud waded into the American market in 1976. That, however, was the same year that Aldi Nord moved in under a completely different name: Trader Joe's. 

Trader Joe's was already a well-established brand, so Aldi Nord simply bought it and kept everything the same. And yes, Trader Joe was a real person. His name was Joe Coulombe, and when he opened his first grocery store in 1967, he wanted to target the part of the population that was growing increasingly more educated and traveled but still had an eye for a bargain. He was inspired to name his store after the first tiki bar in North America, Trader Vic's, and the idea was to capture the feeling of something exotic. That bargain-oriented business model aligned them with Aldi's outlook, and they made grocery store history.