When Melvin A. Ross founded his folding-box company in Lynn, Mass nearly 30 years ago, he had big plans.

"We were going to be the richest box company" in America, Ross says. Searching for a name that would convey his company's destiny, he settled on one that he considered synonymous with great wealth.

He called it the Harvard Folding Box Company.

"Harvard is a great name in this part of the country." Ross adds, explaining that while his company is not the richest box company in America, "we're doing very well."

Ross company is just one of countless businesses in a wide range of industries all over the United States who call themselves Harvard From New York to Los Angeles, Boston to Houston, phone books bulge with cleaners, car washes, retail stores, even restaurants which have--one way or another ended up with the same name as one of the most famous universities in the world.

"It's a sate name. It's a name you can't associate with anything bad. I guess," says Howard Hay of Harvard Cleaners in Philadelphia. But while Flay says he thinks the name safeguards the company apiarist all image of inferiority, he say he doesn't think it helps bring in more business because "Harvard doesn't really distinguish fashion care."

"I don't think a name in itself dote, help," he says, adding that good service and professionalism are more important.

But in an industry where "you live and die by your image," Flax says, a name like Harvard "certainly can't hurt."

"You try to portray the image lisle, says Stanley K. Doobin one of the owners of Harvard Maintenance. Ine..an office cleaning company in Manhanan.

Doobin says that his company's ad in the yellow pages features a man with a monocle and a tuxedo. And the advertising apparently helps.

"We even got a call last week and someone asked." Are you the educated cleaners? Says Doobin. But for all the prestige that comes along with the Harvard name, Doobin says that it wasn't the company's first choice.

"The previous owners wanted it to have a prestigious bare," he says, adding that their first chance was "Princeton" or "Yaks" though he's not sure which. Because there were already corporations it sing those natures in the sate, the company had to settle for Harvard.

But not all companies called Harvard got their name because of the prestige associated with the University.

"My guess would be that it's because the owner's husband is named Harvey," explains James Grilhert, managaer of Harvard Collection Services in Chicago, when asked why his company is called Harvard.

And James A.R. Stauff, president of the Harvard Corporation of Evansville, Wisconsin, says that his concern's title didn't come from the University.