A business needs a good advertising and marketing strategy to attract the attention of customers to increase sales of their products.
The same goes for the brand name or logo used.
So, this article will briefly tell about 12 real names of famous brands that many may never know.
Brad's Drink (Pepsi)
Pepsi is a soft drink made from carbonated water, sugar, vanilla, special oil and kola beans formerly known as Brad's Drink.
The name was originally taken from the name of its founder, Caleb Davis Bradham. After changing the brand name to Pepsi, the drink began to gain attention.
The name Pepsi is taken from the word dyspepsia or indigestion which is believed to be able to treat digestion by its founder.
Burbn (Instagram)
Even IG famous people don't necessarily know the original name of IG.
Burbn was initially a location tracking application founded by Kevin Systrom.
The name Burbn is taken from his favorite alcohol.
After seeing the application start to be used for sending pictures instead of the original purpose of building the application, Systrom turned the application into a photo sharing application and became Instagram.
Backrub (Google)
Larry Page and Sergey Brin named their company based on the way it analyzes internet backlinks to determine a website's level of relevance.
They were initially unhappy with the name. Therefore, Page held a session with Stanford University graduate students where they discussed googolplex.
One of the students who suggested the name had misspelled the word as Google.
Cadabra (Amazon)
In the beginning Jeff Bezos wanted to name his company with the name Cadabra which is short for abracadabra.
After telling the proposal to his lawyer, the lawyer misheard the name cadaver and it was objected by him not to use that name.
Bezos ended up using a third suggestion for the name of his company, Amazon. The name Amazon is taken in conjunction with the name of the longest river in the world in line with Bezos' mission that wants his company to become the largest book company in the world.
Zorba (Zara)
The 1964 film Zorba the Greek was such a favorite of Amancio Ortega that he was inspired to name his store after Zorba.
Due to a nearby bar using the same name and fearing it would cause confusion, Ortega finally changed the name of his company to Zara.
AuctionWeb (eBay)
In the beginning, AuctionWeb only sold one item which was a broken laser pointer.
Pierre Omidyar launched the website to sell $14.38 worth of lasers to collectors of broken laser pointers.
After that he realized that the website had the potential to sell other goods. To align the website with the website of his consulting firm, Echo Bay, he changed the name of the website to eBay.
Cargo Cafe (Starbucks)
According to Starbucks co-founder Gordon Bowker, the name Cargo House is not their favorite.
Bowker, who has a background in advertising, wanted the company's name to start with the letter "st" because it sounded more interesting.
One of the members of his team looked at an old map of the Pacific Northwest and found a town called Starbo.
From that, he looked at the first name in the book which is Moby Dick. A mixture of Starbo and Dick becomes Starbuck. The addition of the letter "s" to the name makes it more conventional.
Kibble (Netflix)
It's like the name of cat food.
After Marc Randolph registered his company under the name Kibble in a project to take on Blockbuster, he wanted to use the name rent.com by the company's launch day.
However, the name was registered by another party and they were asked to pay $40,000 if they wanted to have it.
Eventually they plan to combine elements of the internet and film. Thus, Netflix appeared which is a combination of the word net from internet and flicks from movies.
Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web (Yahoo!)
Can't the name be longer?
Co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo are holders of Ph.D. from Stanford University, created the world's largest search engine.
They plan to use the name Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web but it is not appropriate to name a company.
They ended up choosing Yahoo! which is short for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle and the exclamation mark is used because only Yahoo's name has existed.
Blue Ribbon Sports (Nike)
Does Cristiano Ronaldo know the original name of Nike?
Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight were initially distributors of Japanese-made shoes, Onitsuka Tiger.
Nike and Dimension 6 were the names suggested when they started to expand their business.
Finally, Nike was chosen which was inspired by the name of the Greek goddess of victory as their shoe brand.
Tote'm (7-Eleven)
Tote'm is a grocery store that was established in 1927.
In 1946, when they changed the store's daily operating hours to 7 am to 11 pm, the name 7-Eleven was created.
