It was originally James River Group when first incorporated in 1981. My name + River because we're a block west of the Mississippi River.
In around 1994, we changed to JRiver, Inc. to avoid confusion with the James River Corp, a huge paper company. They immediately merged with Fort Howard, another huge paper company, and became Fort James. If they had, instead, become James Howard, they would have been named after the famous gymnast from my team at Lincoln Southeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. Jim went on to be the assistant gymnastics coach at the University of Nebraska under his former high school arch rival, Francis Allen, who was the head coach there for many years.
A little known fact -- Francis Allen's coach, Phil Sprague, watched me perform on parallel bars in the city meet (3 high schools) in 1963. I came in second to Bill Marple. Mr. Sprague came over after the meet and said, "Nice job, kid. I thought you won."
Ancient history.
