Just 'BackRub' it: What Google, Apple and 17 other of the world's biggest brands were called before they became household names
 Do you Yahoo!? Would you if you had to Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web? While a bad name isn't enough to sink a brand on its own, several of the biggest shed some puzzling titles before becoming worldwide hits. According to CNBC, electronics chain Best Buy was still called Sound of Music back in 1981 when the brand's Roseville, Minnesota, store was reduced to rubble by a tornado. Afterwards, the store held a 'Tornado Sale' in the parking lot advertising 'best buys' on damaged electronics. Two years later, all the stores were rebranded as Best Buy. Google, the most popular search engine provider, earned that name two years after it was founded in 1986, under infinitely less catchy name BackRub. Hertz Rent-A-Car was originally Hertz Drive-Ur-Self System, but changed to The Hertz Corporation in 1954 after a major restructuring. Many of the top brands simply went from wordy and boring to short and sweet with their name changes. Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation became IBM, while Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web became Yahoo, an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. Quantum Computer Services turned into America Online back in 1991, then in 2006 shortened its name to AOL. Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice, once called Il Giornale Coffee Company, was shortened to simply Starbucks, and Marafuku Company turned into Nintendo Playing Card Company before becoming Nintendo. One of the most profitable companies in history, Apple Inc, made only a subtle change from Apple Computers in 2007 as the company moved into other areas of consumer electronics. Once known as Research in Motion, the makers of the BlackBerry simply adopted the name of their flagship product in 2013 as they tried to catch up to competition in the midst of declining sales. Other companies, named after their original founders, eventually outgrew their more provincial-sounding names. Pete's Super Submarines became SUBWAY, Wards Company became Circuit City, Brad's Drink turned into Pepsi-Cola and Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo became Sony. Blue Ribbon Sports, which distributed Japanese sneakers Onitsuka Tiger in the US, eventually became Nike, named after the winged Greek goddess of victory. Other names just fizzled out, like Confinity, the original name for PayPal, intended to 'merge the words confidence and infinity.' eBay's auction site was originally called AuctionWeb when it launched in 1995 alongside a travel site, shipping site and information site on Ebola. Eventually the auction site began to represent the company's most important product, and assumed the name eBay in 1997. Playboy was almost Stag Party, until Stag magazine wrote Hugh Hefner demanding he change the title before releasing the first publication. 'I wanted to call the magazine Stag Party influenced by a cartoon book that I had,' Hefner later reflected. 'I was looking for a male figure of some kind and I thought of an animal in tuxedo will set us apart.' Firefox also avoided stepping on toes, changing its name after discovering another open-source project used the name Firebird. 'It's similar to Firebird. It's easy to remember. It sounds good. It's unique. We like it,' the company said in 2004. |
