Mr. André Citroen was 41 years of age when he founded the automobile company in 1919. Actually this surname comes from Dutch ancestry, his great grandfather named himself Limoenman (Dutch for “Lime Man”) when the civil registration was introduced. His grandfather changed this to Citroen (Dutch for lemon) as he saw more fit. Eventually André’s schoolteacher in France put the diaeresis on the e. André didn’t continue the line of fruits and vegetables like his Dutch ancestor but instead became the fourth largest automobile manufacturer in the world by the early thirties. Existing for 75 years in 1994.