The word Dymaxion is a brand name that Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....

 used for several of his inventions. It is a portmanteau of the words dynamic, maximum, and ion.

A brand name was needed for the display of Fuller's first architectural model, later to be known as the Dymaxion house

Dymaxion house

The Dymaxion House was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times, but they were all factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended...

, at the Marshall Field's

Marshall Field's

Marshall Field & Company was a department store in Chicago, Illinois that grew to become a major chain before being acquired by Macy's Inc...

 department store in Chicago.

In order to invent a word, a wordsmith hired by Marshall Field's spent two days listening to Fuller and trying to get a feel for the type of language he used. He then played with syllables from typical Fuller words, until he and Fuller agreed on the word "Dymaxion".

Fuller was excited about the word and used it for many of his inventions during the decades to follow, including the Dymaxion house

Dymaxion house

The Dymaxion House was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times, but they were all factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended...

, the Dymaxion car

Dymaxion car

thumb|The Dymaxion car designed by inventor–architect [[Buckminster Fuller]].The Dymaxion car was a concept car designed by U.S. inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller in 1933. The word Dymaxion is a brand name that Fuller gave to several of his inventions, to emphasize that he considered them...

, and the Dymaxion World Map

Dymaxion map

The Dymaxion map or Fuller map is a projection of a world map onto the surface of a polyhedron, which can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions. The projection depicts the earth's continents as "one island," or nearly contiguous land masses. The arrangement heavily interrupts the map in order...

. Dymaxion also came to describe a polyphasic sleep

Polyphasic sleep

Polyphasic sleep, a term coined by early 20th-century psychologist J.S. Szymanski, refers to the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period—usually more than two, in contrast to biphasic sleep or monophasic sleep . It does not imply any particular sleep schedule...

 schedule he followed, consisting of four 30 minute naps throughout the day. He also renamed his elaborate journal, in which he sought to document his life as an experiment with the greatest possible detail, as the Dymaxion Chronofile

Dymaxion Chronofile

The Dymaxion Chronofile is Buckminster Fuller's attempt to document his life as completely as possible. He created a very large scrapbook in which he documented his life every 15 minutes from 1920 to 1983. The scrapbook contains copies of all correspondence, bills, notes, sketches, and clippings...

.