Obviously the naming is not consistent among the wikipedia articles in different languages:

Intelsat 33e war ein kommerzieller Kommunikationssatellit des International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat) mit Sitz in Luxemburg.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_33e

Its named after the * International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium*

I was talking about Intelsat 33e which is was a communication satellite, not for espionage, on a geostationary orbit. The russian espionage satellites Olymp-K and Kosmos 1408 mentioned in the other replies, however are/were on a geosynchronous orbit and on low earth orbit, respectively, as you suggested.

I know it does, that’s why I was curious about the novelty of that approach.