Iirc the car is named after the daughter of the inventor.

Not the inventor and it's a bit more complicated. Emil Jellinek was selling Daimler cars, and had them participate in races for publicity. His daughter was called Mercédès Adrienne Ramona Jellinek. The historical record is a bit unclear, either he used her name as a pseudonym for a racer, or he christened one of the cars after her. In any case they won that race, gaining the name some notority which he and the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft used for further marketing later on.