THE WEIRD STORY BEHIND AMAZON'S NAME

Amazon wasn't always called Amazon.

In fact, Jeff Bezos originally wanted to call the company something completely different.

And for a while, the company was actually called:

CADABRA.

THE FIRST NAME

When Bezos started the company in 1994, he called it:

Cadabra, Inc.

The name came from:

“Abracadabra.”

It was meant to suggest something almost magical.

Type something into a computer...

And a product appears.

But there was a problem.

When Bezos said the name over the phone, people sometimes heard:

“Cadaver.”

Not exactly the image you want for a new company.

So he started looking for alternatives.

THEN CAME “RELENTLESS”

Bezos considered several names, including:

• Awake

• BookMall

• Browse

• Relentless

He apparently liked Relentless enough to register the domain.

Even today, if you type:

Relentless.com

it redirects to Amazon.

But the name didn't convince everyone.

Some people thought “relentless” sounded too aggressive or unpleasant.

So Bezos kept searching.

WHY AMAZON?

According to Amazon's own history, Bezos was looking through a dictionary when he came across:

Amazon.

The name referred to the enormous Amazon River.

That immediately appealed to him.

Why?

Because he wanted the company to become huge.

At the time, Amazon was still a tiny online bookstore.

But Bezos wasn't thinking about building the biggest bookstore.

He was thinking much bigger.

THE ALPHABET ALSO HELPED

There was another practical reason.

In the early days of the internet, websites were sometimes listed in alphabetical directories.

Starting with A could put Amazon near the beginning.

So the name had multiple advantages:

A → early in the alphabet

Amazon River → enormous scale

Amazon → distinctive and memorable

THE FUNNIEST PART

The company officially became Amazon.com in 1994.

But Bezos never completely abandoned the old name.

That's why:

Relentless.com

still points toward Amazon.

Imagine if the company had kept the original idea.

We might today be ordering products from:

Relentless.com

instead of Amazon.

SIMPLE IDEA

A company name can look obvious after it becomes famous.

Before that happens, it's often just an experiment.

Amazon went through:

Cadabra

↓

Relentless

↓

Amazon

And nobody knew which name would eventually become one of the world's most recognizable brands.

MAACAT PERSPECTIVE

The strange part isn't that Amazon considered different names.

It's that the final name was chosen partly because of an enormous river.

Bezos wasn't describing what the company was at the time.

He was describing what he wanted it to become:

something enormous.