The name “Caeleste”

On November 12, 2006, Bart Dierickx, Patrick Henckes and Walter Beynens brainstormed on a name for the company to be. A very large number of original to very original names were proposed. One that stuck was “Harmonia Caelestium” (harmony of the heavens), which became Celeste (a girl’s name, in good company with Mercedes and Stella) and eventually Caeleste.

For general use we say that Caeleste is the combination of “Caeles” (Latin for sky, heavens, thus “space”), and TE, technology.

There is no prescribed pronunciation. Latin pronunciation is preferred [kαilεste].

The logo When leaving the restaurant after our first company Christmas dinner, there happened to be a lunar eclipse – see photo. This clearly inspired our logo design. We made it a tradition: since then we schedule our company reunions and parties on lunar and solar eclipse days. Our office We like to sit “high in the sky”. Our initial office was the 2^nd floor loft of Bart’s house. Today we are on the 3^rd floor and 4^th floor loft of the pre-postmodernistic building called “De Lucht” (“The Sky”, really!) in the beautiful and classified neighborhood Zurenborg in Berchem, Antwerp.

The number of shares: 5040

At the founding of the company Caeleste CVBA on 18 December 2006, the number of shares was fixed at 5040. 5040 is the number that Plato, in his work “The Laws”, proposes as the ideal number of families in a society. The underlying reason being that 5040 can be divided by all numbers 2…10 and 12, making it easy to divide the population in those number of equal fractions (in fact overlooking that also the number 2520 bears that property).