The arena opened in 1993 as the San Jose Arena. Before the building changed its original name because of corporate sponsorship, Sharks radio play-by-play broadcaster Dan Rusanowsky always referred to it as the "spectacular" San Jose Arena. Later, naming rights were sold to Compaq, and the facility became Compaq Center at San Jose; the geographic identifier was needed because at the time, there was a Compaq Center in Houston. After HP purchased Compaq in 2002, the company chose to name the arena the HP Pavilion (as opposed to HP Center or HP Arena) after one of their computer models. (The former arena in Houston is now a church.)
