What Does HP Stand For?

HP stands for Hewlett-Packard

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were friends who studied engineering at Stanford University. In 1939 they set up shop in a rented garage in Palo Alto, California, and made electronic test equipment. They named the business after themselves, Hewlett-Packard. It is often said that a coin toss decided whose name came first.

The garage is now a California historic landmark and is frequently described as a birthplace of the tech industry in that region. Over the decades the company grew into one of the best known names in computing, and its initials became its everyday name.

What the HP name means today

In the 2010s, the original company split into two. HP Inc. kept the short name and focuses on personal computers and printing. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, often written HPE, focuses on business technology such as servers and networking. Both trace their roots to the same garage.

When people say "HP" in daily life, they usually mean HP Inc. or the logo on a home or office device. The letters no longer need to be spelled out; most customers know the brand only as HP. You can read about other company names built from letters in brand name acronyms, and learn what the letters in PC mean on its own page.

What does HP stand for in games?

In video games and tabletop role playing games, HP stands for hit points, and many players read it as health points. It is the number that shows how much damage a character can take before being knocked out. The idea goes back to tabletop games of the 1970s and spread to computer games soon after.

Players use it in chat all the time: "low HP, need a heal," "the boss has a huge HP pool." HP often sits next to MP, which usually means magic or mana points. Find more game terms on the RPG and NPC pages.

HP as horsepower

On engines and motors, hp means horsepower, a unit of power. The term goes back to the steam engine era, when engineer James Watt compared his engines with the work of draft horses. One mechanical horsepower is about 746 watts.

• "The boat has a 150 hp outboard motor."
• "This pool pump is rated at 1.5 hp."
• "The new engine adds 20 horsepower over the old one."

In technical writing it is usually lowercase, hp, after a number. In car ads you may also see HP in capitals.

Other HP meanings by field

Writing and saying HP

Read it as two letters, "H P," the way initialisms are spoken. For the labels, visit acronym vs abbreviation. The letter name aitch opens with a vowel sound, so most American writers put an before it: "an HP computer," "an HP boost." No periods are used in the company name or in game text.