Yahoo, one of the most successful Internet giants in later 1990s, is now becoming a company living with selling assets(offices, domain names) and holding the stocks from Alibaba. Its core business which it was proud of has been sold to Verison with $4.8 billion as disclosed in some document submitted to SEC. Now it's starting the process of changing its name to Altaba.
After the acquisition, the current Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will resign from the board. But the company will still keep some valuable assets including the $35 billion worth of Alibaba's stock and Yahoo Japan. Only the company holding these assets will be renamed to Altaba while the business sold to Verison will still keep the name Yahoo.
The name Altaba is quite like Alibaba, and is thought to be a blend of the words "alternative" and "Alibaba." . After seeing this name, many Chinese find it's interesting and think the meaning of the name is "Alibaba's father". Because this name can be divided into Al + ta + ba. In Chinese, Al will be Alibaba, ta will be his/her, ba will be father. So the meaning of the blended name will be "Alibaba's father".
It's not unreasonable to give its name this meaning since Yahoo currently holds 15% of Alibaba's stocks and its worth is $35 billion. And it's the second largest shareholder of Alibaba.