Famous Brands That Started With Different Names
Brand names carry weight – more than plenty realize. One that’s catchy? It stays with you.
But if it flops, you’ll blank on it by the parking lot. Even top global labels once had clunky picks at launch.
Perhaps the first name felt clunky, hard to remember, or just weird. Firms switched things up – yet most folks didn’t realize these labels ever had earlier versions.
Nike Started as Blue Ribbon Sports
Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman founded Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964. They imported running shoes from Japan and sold them out of the back of a station wagon at track meets.
The name was forgettable, which turned out to be a problem when they wanted to grow beyond local athletes.
In 1971, they needed a new name to launch their own shoe line. Employee Jeff Johnson suggested Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory.
Knight didn’t love it but they were out of time and had to print the new shoes. The swoosh logo came from a design student who charged them $35.
Nike became one of the most recognizable brands in sports. Blue Ribbon Sports would have disappeared into obscurity.
Google Was BackRub
Larry Page and Sergey Brin created a search engine at Stanford in 1996. They called it BackRub because it analyzed backlinks to rank web pages.
The name described what the technology did, but it sounded weird and vaguely uncomfortable.
They renamed it Google in 1997, a play on “googol,” the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name reflected their mission to organize massive amounts of information.
Someone registered the domain with a typo, spelling it Google instead of Googol, and they kept it. A year later, they incorporated as Google Inc.
BackRub would have been a terrible name for a company now worth over a trillion dollars.
Pepsi Was Brad’s Drink
Caleb Bradham invented a carbonated beverage in his North Carolina pharmacy in 1893. He called it Brad’s Drink, after himself.
Customers liked it, and he started selling it to other pharmacies. But Brad’s Drink sounded like something you’d order at a local soda fountain, not a national brand.
Bradham renamed it Pepsi-Cola in 1898. The name came from pepsin, a digestive enzyme, and kola nuts, one of the ingredients.
The new name sounded more like medicine, which was the style at the time. Pepsi grew into Coca-Cola’s biggest competitor.
Brad’s Drink would have stayed regional at best.
Instagram Was Burbn
Kevin Systrom built a location-based app called Burbn in 2010. It let users check in at locations, make plans with friends, and share photos.
The app tried to do too much and confused users. Systrom noticed people mainly used one feature: photo sharing.
He stripped out everything except photos, filters, and comments. The simplified app needed a new name.
Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger combined “instant camera” and “telegram” to create Instagram. They launched on October 6, 2010, and gained 25,000 users the first day.
Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion two years later. Burbn would have drowned in the crowded location-based app market.
Nintendo Started as a Playing Card Company
Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai in Kyoto, Japan, in 1889. The company made handmade playing cards called hanafuda.
Nintendo roughly translates to “leave luck to heaven,” which made sense for a gambling-adjacent business. They sold cards successfully for decades.
The company didn’t make video games until the 1970s, after Yamauchi’s great-grandson took over and saw an opportunity in electronics. They shortened the name to Nintendo and released the Color TV-Game console in 1977.
The Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System in the West) came in 1983. The playing card company name stuck even though the business transformed completely.
Best Buy Was Sound of Music
Richard Schulze and a partner opened Sound of Music in 1966 in St. Paul, Minnesota. They sold home and car stereo equipment.
The store did well for years as a regional stereo chain. Then a tornado destroyed the store in 1981.
Schulze decided to hold a “Tornado Sale” in the parking lot. The event generated massive revenue, and he realized the traditional retail model was outdated.
He renamed the chain Best Buy and shifted to a big-box discount format with a wider product selection. The first Best Buy Superstore opened in 1983.
Best Buy became a national electronics giant. Sound of Music would have stayed small and regional.
Sony Was Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo
Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha in 1946. The name meant Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation.
It was accurate but terrible for international business. Try saying it three times fast.
They needed a name that worked globally. Morita wanted something short and easy to pronounce in any language.
They combined “sonus,” the Latin word for sound, with “sonny,” American slang for a bright young man. Sony was born in 1958.
The new name positioned them for global expansion. The original Japanese name would have limited them to domestic markets.
Starbucks Almost Became Cargo House
Howard Schultz didn’t found Starbucks, but he transformed it. The original Starbucks opened in Seattle in 1971.
It sold coffee beans and equipment but didn’t brew coffee. Schultz joined as marketing director in 1982.
Before settling on Starbucks, the founders considered names like Cargo House and Pequod. They chose Starbucks because it sounded better and wasn’t as clunky.
When Schultz bought the company in 1987, he kept the name and expanded into cafes. Cargo House sounds like a shipping company, not a coffee empire.
Android Was Android Inc.
Andy Rubin founded Android Inc. in 2003 to develop an operating system for digital cameras. The name made sense for a tech startup.
But the company struggled financially and pivoted to mobile phones when they realized cameras weren’t the right market.
Google bought Android Inc. in 2005 for an estimated $50 million. They kept the name but dropped the “Inc.” suffix when they integrated it into Google.
Android launched as a mobile operating system in 2008. The name stayed the same, but the identity and purpose changed completely.
Without Google’s backing, Android Inc. would have failed.
Twitter Started as twttr
Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams created a microblogging platform in 2006. They originally called it twttr, following the trend of dropping vowels from names like Flickr.
The idea was to send short status updates via text message. They added vowels and registered Twitter.com before launch because twttr was too difficult to remember and spell.
The name came from the concept of birds tweeting short bursts of information. Twitter felt more complete and easier to market.
The platform exploded after launching at South by Southwest in 2007. twttr would have confused people trying to find the site.
eBay Was AuctionWeb
Pierre Omidyar created AuctionWeb in 1995 as part of his personal website. He built it over Labor Day weekend to let people buy and sell items online through auctions.
The first item sold was a broken laser pointer, which someone bought for $14.83. Omidyar asked the buyer if they knew it was broken.
They said yes, they collected broken laser pointers. AuctionWeb grew quickly, but the name was generic and forgettable.
Omidyar renamed it eBay in 1997, short for Echo Bay, the name of his consulting firm. The domain echobay.com was taken, so he shortened it to eBay.
The snappier name helped the company grow into the dominant online auction platform. AuctionWeb sounded like a directory, not a destination.
Samsung Means “Three Stars”
Lee Byung-chul founded Samsung in 1938 in South Korea. The name means “three stars” in Korean.
The company started as a trading company selling dried fish, produce, and noodles. It had nothing to do with electronics.
Samsung didn’t enter electronics until the late 1960s. They made black-and-white televisions first, then expanded into other devices.
The name stayed the same even though the business changed completely. Unlike most companies on this list, Samsung kept its original name through a massive business transformation.
The name worked because it was abstract enough to mean anything the company wanted it to mean.
PayPal Was Confinity
Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek founded Confinity in 1998. The company developed security software for handheld devices.
The name blended “confidence” and “infinity,” suggesting unlimited trust. It sounded like a tech company but didn’t indicate what they did.
Confinity created a digital wallet called PayPal as one of their products. The wallet became so popular that they renamed the entire company PayPal in 2001.
The new name told you exactly what the service did: pay your pal. eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002.
Confinity was too abstract for a payment company.
What a Name Actually Does
These firms show names do more than tag things – they affect what folks believe plus decide to recall. Blue Ribbon Sports felt like a corner store.
But Nike feels like winning. Brad’s Drink seemed tiny, almost homey.
Meanwhile, Pepsi-Cola came off as big, fresh, maybe even bold. BackRub painted a clear picture yet felt clunky.
On the flip side, Google is stuck in your mind while keeping things light.
Some firms held onto their original names even when shifting what they did, simply ’cause those labels could stretch along with time. Take Samsung – began selling dried seafood, now builds smartphones.
Then there’s Nintendo – kicked off with card decks, later jumped into digital gaming. Their success?
The titles never tied them down to one thing. Some switched things up since their names felt too narrow, odd, or just tricky to recall.
Staying known often depends on how easily folks can pin down your name.
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