Why the Golem name?

Most people are asking me why I choose the name Cycles Golem for my company and not Guillaume or Désy. Well, I don’t feel the last two sound good for a bike.

So here is why.

The first name is easy, Cycles, because I build bicycles.

For the Golem name, I need to explain.

First off, for those who don’t know what is a Golem, it is a creature build like a human and made from clay. Here is a more elaborate definition and note that for my part there is no religious connotation:

The Bible in its psalm 139,6 uses the word Golem on its original sense, is embryo, substance informs. According to the rabbis, the creation of Adam was made in seven days, during the last one, God blew in the nostrils and livened him up, it is then that certain Rabbis considered possible to create a living being. According to the legends, certain Saint Thamuldics had managed to liven up a mass having the strength of a man. At the time of the crusades, the Jews to try to survive and inclined to defend themseleves created this terrible but unverifiable weapon that was Golem. They had to mold with some red clay a human statue in little meadows of the size of a ten-year-old child, then to write on the forehead the word Life in Jew, is EMETH. Immediately, the creature lived, becoming a docile slave for the magician who could so order him the hardest works. A single inconvenience, Golem grew with fast, becoming a giant. The only remedy to transform Golem in a sluggish mass was to erase on the forehead word Life and to replace it by the Dead word that is Meth. A rabbi named Ben Levi, so created four giants who dug within its house an underground passage of one thousand no length, which he needed to hide his treasures and his books, on the eve of a search, of which he had secretly been warned. When the work was ended, the Rabbi was hardly embarrassed, because Golems had three times their sizes, he ordered respectively three golems to kneel down to retie the cords of his sandals, tehn he was able to erase on their fronts the first letter of the word Life. In XVI th century, during the persecutions against the Jews, the stories of Golem took a considerable importance, this last one being either transformed into slaves but into kind of nationalist heroes, as a matter of fact a symbol of defender.

For me, I wanted a name that began by “G” like Guillaume. And I remembered an Atari game where a magician would make a Golem raise from the earth to protect him.

A Golem is made from earth. My frames are made from steel and titanium (soon) and the main components come from the earth too.

Then, the protection side of the Golem could translate as your bike is getting you healthy, thus protecting you from diseases and being too fat. Moreover, your bike take you off your daily grind and let your soul rests, which is good for each of us.

So there it is, I’m the one who bring the Golems to life from a pile of unanimated tubes to a simple machine that is a bicycle.