We have all bought from Amazon at some time or, at least, we know the online store and website and we know that it is one of the great giants of international sales. But,Have you ever wondered why it’s called Amazon? And why did he start calling himself that long before we all knew his name?
Although today’s is known worldwide, it was not its original name and we will tell you the story.
Original name: Cadabra
When Jeff Bezos thought of Amazon, he didn’t think of it with the name we all know now. It was the nineties and in Seattle, in Washington, the company was registered under a different name than it is today. Bezos thought of the company as Cadabra Inc based on the magic word “abracadabra.” Why did he choose this? Because his idea was sell the online store as a store that would work as if by magic, boasting of its advantages.
But although Cadabra was the original name, it did not catch on. After a few months and talking about this project, a lawyer misheard the name and confused it with “corpse.” This made it necessary to rethink the naming to avoid problems in the future or confusion among users and potential buyers. Then it was time to find a new name that would fit what they wanted.
Amazon has arrived
After the confusion, we had to look for some name to replace “Cadabra” and the good idea related to magic. But it was not easy. It had to be a word that had to do with the topic, that was easy to pronounce, that was easily understood or remembered by everyone. And they got to work.
Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Tuttle, began to register different domains on the Internet with all the ideas that came to mind. Words like Awake, like Browse, Bookmall or Relentless were some of the options from which they could choose, but in the end they believed that the best thing would be for the word to start with A, thus trying to make it appear among the first on the Internet. Because? At that time, the sites were arranged in alphabetical order.
They looked up words with A in the dictionary and came up with Amazon, a word that referred to the largest river on the planet and that served as what they wanted to symbolize. By then, Amazon pretended to be a huge bookstore, the largest on the planet. And the name was perfect for this initial idea.
After finding the perfect word, registered the domain at the end of 1994 to, months later, officially present it to the world and begin to become the great online store that we all know today. In addition, it is not just an online bookstore but has become one of the Internet giants in the field of shopping but with many other services such as Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Amazon Photos, Amazon Drive… Although it no longer carries the name of the “magic”, Bezos made the name sound for everyone.
