English 'brand' comes from Old English 'brand' (fire, torch, sword-blade), from Proto-Germanic *brandaz (burning), from PIE *gʷʰer- (to heat) — the word traveled from 'fire' to 'a mark burned into cattle' to 'a trademark,' making every corporate brand literally a burn mark of ownership.
A type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name; a particular identity or image regarded as an asset.
From Old English 'brand' (fire, flame, torch; a burning piece of wood; poetically, a sword), from Proto-Germanic *brandaz (fire, burning, a firebrand), from PIE *gʷʰer- (to heat, to warm, to burn) via a suffixed derivative *gʷʰr-n-d-o-. The PIE root *gʷʰer- also underlies English 'warm' (from Proto-Germanic *warmaz), Latin 'formus' (warm), Greek 'thermos' (hot) — the source of 'thermal,' 'thermometer,' and 'thermos' — and Sanskrit 'gharmah' (heat). The semantic journey of 'brand' is traceable step by step: a 'brand' was first a piece of burning wood (8th-century Old English), then a mark made by pressing a burning iron onto flesh (livestock-marking
In Old English poetry, 'brand' meant 'sword' — because a sword blade gleamed like a torch flame. The semantic path from 'fire' to 'corporate identity' runs through cattle ranching: branding livestock with a hot iron to mark ownership. Every modern brand is, etymologically, a burn mark claiming ownership.