15 Major Brands That Changed Their Names Entirely
Big companies don’t usually throw away their brand names. These names represent years of advertising, customer loyalty, and billions of dollars in recognition.
But sometimes circumstances force even the most successful businesses to start over with something completely different. Let’s look at some familiar companies that used to go by totally different names.
Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Became Sony
The Japanese company that would dominate electronics worldwide started in 1946 with a name that was impossible for international customers to pronounce. Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo meant Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, which was accurate but terrible for marketing.
Founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka wanted something short and memorable that worked in any language. They combined the Latin word ‘sonus’ (meaning sound) with ‘sonny’ (a term of endearment) to create Sony in 1958.
The new name could fit on products, was easy to say anywhere in the world, and didn’t tie the company to just one type of product.
BackRub Turned Into Google
Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched their search engine in 1996 under a name that sounds like a massage service. BackRub referred to the technology that analyzed ‘back links’ to determine which websites were most important.
The name was technically accurate but gave entirely the wrong impression about what the site actually did. When they needed something better, they played with the mathematical term ‘googol’ (a one followed by 100 zeros) to represent the massive amount of information they were organizing.
A misspelling turned googol into Google, and nobody bothered to fix it because the new version looked better and was easier to trademark.
Blue Ribbon Sports Transformed Into Nike
Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman started their athletic shoe company in 1964 by importing Japanese running shoes and selling them from a car trunk. Blue Ribbon Sports was their original name, which was forgettable and didn’t inspire anyone to run faster.
When they started making their own shoes in 1971, they needed a name with more punch. An employee suggested Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, just before a crucial meeting with their first major retailer.
Knight didn’t love it but was out of time and went with it anyway. The swoosh logo and the mythological name ended up creating one of the most valuable brands on the planet.
Sound Of Music Changed To Best Buy
Richard Schulze opened an audio equipment store in Minnesota in 1966 focused entirely on stereo systems and records. Sound of Music was a cute reference to the famous musical, but it limited what the store could sell without confusing customers.
A tornado destroyed his store in 1981, so Schulze held a ‘tornado sale’ in the parking lot that was so successful he realized he should expand beyond audio equipment. The new concept would be a superstore selling all kinds of electronics at competitive prices, so Sound of Music became Best Buy in 1983.
The straightforward name told customers exactly what they were getting without any confusion about whether the store sold musical instruments or something else entirely.
Brad’s Drink Evolved Into Pepsi-Cola
Pharmacist Caleb Bradham invented his cola drink in 1893 and named it after himself with all the creativity of someone who just wanted to sell refreshments. Brad’s Drink was served at his drugstore in New Bern, North Carolina, where it became popular with locals who had no other options.
Bradham believed his drink aided digestion because it contained pepsin, an enzyme that breaks down proteins. He renamed it Pepsi-Cola in 1898, combining pepsin with cola (the main flavor) to create something that sounded more like a real product than just some guy’s homemade recipe.
The new name stuck even though the drink never actually helped anyone’s digestion.
Quantum Computer Services Became America Online
This company started in 1985 providing online services for Commodore computers, which meant almost nobody knew what they did based on the name alone. Quantum Computer Services sounded technical and intimidating, which was fine when only computer enthusiasts were online.
When the internet started reaching regular households in the early 1990s, the company needed a name that wouldn’t scare away people who barely understood what a modem was. America Online captured both the national ambition and the basic concept of going online, making it accessible to millions of confused users who just wanted to check their email.
The rebrand to AOL in 1991 came right before the internet explosion that would make the company worth $200 billion at its peak.
Pete’s Super Submarines Shortened To Subway
Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 to open a sandwich shop in Connecticut in 1965 with a partner named Pete. Pete’s Super Submarines was long, awkward, and made the business sound like it was really Pete’s venture when Pete was actually a silent partner who contributed capital.
DeLuca needed a name that was easier to fit on signs and that reflected his vision of opening multiple locations. Subway came about in 1968 as a simple description of submarine sandwiches that also happened to be short enough to remember and spell.
The name worked so well that the chain grew to become the world’s largest restaurant chain by location count, even though nobody associates it with actual subway trains anymore.
Guide To The World Wide Web Became Yahoo
Stanford students Yang and David Filo created a directory of websites in 1994 when the internet was still new enough that someone needed to organize it manually. Guide to the World Wide Web was descriptive but way too long to type into a browser, and having Yang’s name in it made the whole thing feel unprofessional.
They wanted something short and fun that captured the excitement of discovering new websites. Yahoo stood for ‘Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle’ but that backronym came later because they really just liked how the word sounded.
The exclamation point (Yahoo!) added energy and made the brand feel less serious than other tech companies trying to look corporate and important.
Cadabra Became Amazon
Jeff Bezos originally named his online bookstore Cadabra, as in ‘abracadabra,’ to suggest the magic of finding any book you wanted with just a few clicks. The name lasted only a few months in 1994 before Bezos realized people kept hearing it as ‘cadaver’ over the phone, which is a terrible association for any business that isn’t a funeral home.
He wanted a name starting with ‘A’ so his site would appear first in alphabetical directory listings, back when that actually mattered. Amazon worked because it was the biggest river in the world, and Bezos planned to build the biggest bookstore in the world.
The name gave him room to expand beyond books into everything else, though nobody in 1995 imagined Amazon would eventually sell groceries, cloud computing, and streaming video.
The Facebook Dropped Its First Word
Mark Zuckerberg launched ‘The Facebook’ at Harvard in 2004 as a digital version of the student directories (called face books) that colleges printed each year. The article ‘The’ made it sound like a specific thing at a specific school, which was accurate at first but became limiting as the site spread to other universities.
Dropping ‘The’ to become just Facebook in 2005 made the name cleaner and suggested it could work anywhere, not just at Harvard. The change came right as the site was expanding beyond colleges to high schools and eventually to everyone.
Sean Parker, an early advisor, convinced Zuckerberg to buy the Facebook.com domain for $200,000, which seemed expensive until the company became worth over a trillion dollars.
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company Became IBM
This company formed in 1911 through a merger of three different businesses that made scales, time clocks, and tabulating machines for processing data. Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company accurately described what they did but took so long to say that employees abbreviated it to CTR, which didn’t mean anything to potential customers.
Thomas Watson became president in 1914 and spent a decade building an international presence before officially changing the name to International Business Machines in 1924. IBM suggested the company worked everywhere and could handle any kind of business machine, not just the specific products in its original name.
The three-letter abbreviation IBM became so iconic that most people today have no idea what it stands for.
Stag Party Beer Switched To Old Milwaukee
The Gettelman Brewery in Milwaukee introduced a beer called Stag in 1849, then added ‘Party’ to create Stag Party Beer because apparently nobody thought about how that name would sound in mixed company. The brewery kept the name for decades despite the obvious problem that made it awkward to order in front of certain people.
When Miller Brewing Company bought Gettelman in 1961, they immediately recognized they couldn’t market a beer with ‘party’ in the name to a mass audience. They renamed it Old Milwaukee to emphasize the beer’s heritage and association with Milwaukee’s brewing tradition.
The change turned an embarrassing name into something that sounded established and trustworthy, even though the beer’s recipe stayed mostly the same.
Confinity Merged And Became PayPal
Max Levchin and Peter Thiel started Confinity in 1998 to develop security software for handheld devices, which had nothing to do with online payments initially. The company pivoted to creating a payment service called PayPal that let people email money to each other, and the payment service became so much more popular than everything else that the company name stopped making sense.
When Confinity merged with Elon Musk’s X.com in 2000, the combined company kept the X.com name at first because Musk insisted on it. The board eventually overruled him and renamed the whole company PayPal in 2001 because that was the product everyone actually used and recognized.
Musk never quite got over losing the X.com name, which partly explains why he later paid billions to rebrand Twitter as X.
BlackBerry Formerly Research In Motion
Back then, the firm behind BlackBerry began life in 1984 under the name Research In Motion – known widely as RIM. Though fitting for engineers tinkering with new ideas, that label didn’t stick with regular buyers looking for reliable gadgets.
Over time, the phone itself grew into a household name while the company faded behind it. Customers hardly noticed there was ever another title attached.
As iPhones and Android devices pulled ahead, leadership bet on clarity over history. In 2013, they dropped RIM entirely, rebranding everything under the single banner of BlackBerry.
By then, momentum had already slipped away. Still, one thing cleared up at last – the two names belonged to the same place.
Datsun Became Nissan
Starting back in 1958, Japanese automakers shipped cars to the U.S. labeled Datsun, gaining trust over time by offering compact models that rarely broke down and stayed cheap to buy. That name – Datsun – wasn’t official at first; it came from initials of early founders plus a model rolled out decades earlier, in 1931.
Though inside Japan the business ran under the name Nissan, those across the Pacific had never heard that title, recognizing only the badge on showrooms: Datsun. By 1981, leaders within the corporation chose to retire the familiar tag everywhere, pushing one global identity rooted solely in the homegrown label, Nissan.
Shoppers in America scratched their heads when trucks and roadsters once stamped Datsun arrived wearing different emblems, unsure whether these new-badged versions matched what they used to drive. Sales took a hit soon after, as loyalty wavered amid questions about quality between old favorites and whatever now carried the Nissan mark.
What Names Really Mean
Names stick around longer than anyone expects. Fifteen companies on this list show change makes sense when old labels start dragging down progress – yet some fixes only came after glaring flaws threatened their path.
Today’s familiar titles weren’t always first picks; stress shaped many, but strong offerings kept them alive regardless. A clever idea in meetings may crumble outside, whereas offhand ideas gain massive value once customers live with them long enough.
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