Nike's afterlife in the modern world has almost nothing to do with worship and everything to do with branding and defense technology, two unrelated borrowings of the same ancient name. In 1971 the sportswear company later called Nike, Inc. took its name from the goddess on the suggestion of an early employee, Jeff Johnson, who reportedly dreamed the word; the company's swoosh logo, designed the same year by graphic design student Carolyn Davidson for a modest fee, is commonly read as an abstracted wing, echoing the goddess's own winged form even though it depicts no literal feather. The choice fit a long pattern of naming athletic and competitive ventures for victory itself, and the brand's global reach has made Nike, for most people who encounter the name today, a shoe company first and a goddess only on reflection.
A very different borrowing came decades earlier from the United States military. The Nike family of surface to air missiles, developed from the late 1940s and deployed through the Cold War, ran from the first operational guided missile system, Nike Ajax, through the larger Nike Hercules and the anti ballistic Nike Zeus, each named for the goddess of victory in a straightforward bid for a fitting, martial name rather than any classical allusion beyond the obvious. Batteries ringed American cities through the 1950s and 1960s as part of continental air defense before being phased out. Between the sneaker and the missile, Nike's name now travels further, and touches more people daily, than her ancient cult at the Acropolis ever did.