McDonald’s adopted its current corporate name, McDonald’s Corporation, in 1960.
The company’s corporate identity developed after Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their original restaurant in San Bernardino, California, and Ray Kroc began franchising the system. Kroc’s expansion made a consistent company name increasingly important across restaurants, advertising, and business operations.
The name change is easy to confuse with other milestones. The McDonald brothers opened their first restaurant in 1948, Kroc joined the business in the 1950s, and the first franchised McDonald’s under Kroc’s organization opened in 1955. Those events shaped the company’s growth, but 1960 marks the adoption of the corporate name McDonald’s Corporation.
Corporate naming was part of a broader branding process that also included standardized restaurant designs, familiar menu terminology, and the growing prominence of the Golden Arches.