Why Is It Called Amazon? The Name That Started as “Cadabra”

The origin: from “Cadabra” to a river in the dictionary

Amazon is named after the Amazon river. Bezos was building what he called “Earth’s biggest bookstore”, and he wanted a name to match the ambition: the Amazon is not just the largest river in the world, it carries more water than the next several combined. A name that said “biggest” before the company was anything of the sort did real work, and it started with the letter he wanted for another reason entirely.

That reason was alphabetical. In the mid-1990s, online directories and “what’s new” lists were often ordered A to Z, so a name near the front of the alphabet was a small, free edge. It is why one of the names on his shortlist was “Aard”, a nonsense word chosen purely to sit first. “Amazon” scratched the same itch while actually meaning something, so he registered amazon.com on 1 November 1994 and moved on to building the store.

The tidy version stops there. The instructive version is what came before it: the company was originally incorporated as “Cadabra, Inc.”, from “abracadabra”, and the name lasted only until Bezos said it out loud to his lawyer, who heard “cadaver”. That single mishearing killed the name, and it is the most useful moment in the whole story.

The “Cadabra” test: a name that failed out loud

“Cadabra” looks fine written down. It reads as playful, a little magical, obviously derived from a word everyone knows. It failed anyway, because it was never going to live only on paper. The first time it had to survive a phone line, one of its syllables collapsed into “cadaver”, and a bookstore cannot be named after a corpse by accident.

This is the single most reproducible lesson in the Amazon story, and it costs nothing to copy. A name is a spoken asset first: it will be said in noisy rooms, left on voicemails, and misheard by people who have never seen it spelled. If a candidate mishears into something grim, ridiculous, or simply wrong, it will do so in every one of those settings, forever. Bezos found that out by luck, in a single conversation. You can find it out on purpose, by saying every finalist aloud to someone who has never read it and listening to what they think you said.

The “Relentless” pivot: a good word with the wrong feeling

With “Cadabra” gone, Bezos reached for “Relentless”, and he liked it enough to register the domain. Friends told him it sounded a little sinister, more like a threat than a shop, and he let it go. The tell that he never fully abandoned it: relentless.com still redirects to Amazon today, decades later.

“Relentless” is a real, correctly spelled, easy-to-say English word. It fails on a dimension a dictionary check will never catch: connotation. The question that saved the name was not “what does this word mean?” but “what does it make a stranger feel when they hear it cold?”. Meaning is in the dictionary; feeling is in the room. A name can be flawless on paper and still carry the wrong emotional charge for the thing you are building, and the only way to find that out is to test the feeling, not the definition.

1. Phonetics: why “Amazon” lands cleanly

Say it out loud: AM-a-zon. Three even beats, an open vowel to start, and a shape English speakers already carry around. After “Cadabra”, the contrast is the point.

• An open, easy onsetThe leading “A” opens the mouth and the word rolls forward from there, with no consonant cluster to trip over. Easy onsets are easy to shout across a room, which is where names actually compete.
• Sound-to-spelling fidelityHeard once, it types back out correctly: the sounds map onto their obvious letters, with no silent traps and no “Z or S?” fork. Self-spelling names spread by word of mouth without leaking traffic to the wrong address.
• No mishearing to fearThe whole word is already known, so there is no dark second reading waiting on a phone line. The exact failure that killed “Cadabra” is impossible here, which is precisely why the replacement felt safe.

The lesson is not “use a familiar word”. It is that pronounceability and safe mishearing are checkable properties, and the founder only reached this name by failing the check once first.

2. Memorability: vivid, distinctive, and borrowed

Memorability research keeps pointing at two levers, ease of processing and distinctiveness, and “Amazon” pulls hard on both, with one honest caveat that the house style insists on.

• A concrete imageThe word arrives with a picture attached: a vast river, an overwhelming volume of water. Concrete, imageable names are easier to store and recall than abstract coinages, and this one’s image happened to match the pitch exactly.
• Distinctive in its lineupIts 1994 shelf was “Books.com”, “Bookstore.com”, literal and forgettable. A river’s name against that row of descriptors was the odd one out, and the odd one out is what memory keeps.
• The dictionary-word caveatBecause it is a borrowed word, it came pre-loaded with prior meaning (the river, the mythological warriors). The brand had to overwrite an existing association rather than define a blank one. Amazon had the budget and the decade to win that fight; most names do not.

3. Cross-language safety and the domain

A global storefront needs a name that survives every market it enters, and “Amazon” travels unusually well: the river and the myth give it a recognised footprint in most major languages, the phonemes are common, and there are no diacritics to strip. Honest framing, as always: a screen reports no flags across the languages checked, never a blanket “safe”.

The domain is where the borrowed word bites back. A common dictionary word is the hardest kind of string to own outright: the exact-match .com comes pre-claimed almost everywhere, because the word belonged to the language long before it belonged to any company. Amazon secured amazon.com in 1994 only because the web was young and the land was still unclaimed. Try to build a new “Amazon” today and you would inherit the name’s charm and none of its availability, which is the structural tax on every real word, and exactly why a coinage you can own is often worth more than a dictionary word you cannot.

The Namoly Report simulation: “Amazon”

Here’s how “Amazon” performs when run through Namoly’s four weighted checks. This is an illustrative, worked example: the overall is the weighted mean of the sub-scores, using the same weights every real report uses (domain 0.30, memorability 0.25, phonetics 0.25, cross-language safety 0.20). Notice it does not sweep the board, and that is the honest part.

• Global Namoly Score77 / 100Good
• ReadabilityHighFamiliar word, parsed first try
• Linguistic safetyHighNo flags in the languages checked

1. Domain availabilityweight 0.30The name’s one real weakness. “Amazon” is a common dictionary word, so its exact-match .com comes pre-owned; the company got amazon.com in 1994 only because the web was young. A new brand borrowing a word this familiar would fight for every extension. The score reflects the string’s inherent ownability, not Amazon’s present portfolio.55Fair
2. Memorability & distinctivenessweight 0.25Concrete, vivid, and wildly distinctive next to the “Books.com” literalism of its 1994 category. One honest caveat: it is a borrowed word carrying prior images (a river, the mythological warriors), so the brand had to overwrite an existing meaning rather than mint one from nothing.84Strong
3. Phonetics & readabilityweight 0.25AM-a-zon: three even beats, an open vowel to start, and a shape every English speaker already owns. Heard once, it spells itself, with no “is that a Z or an S?” fork. A world away from “Cadabra”, the name it replaced.88Strong
4. Cross-language safetyweight 0.20No flags across the major world languages checked; the river and the myth give it a recognised, broadly neutral footprint, with common phonemes and no diacritics that force a local respelling.86Strong
5. Overall Namoly Scoreweighted meanA brilliant, evocative name with one built-in cost: as a real word, it is the hard case to own. Strong where it counts, Fair only on the domain.77Good

• Strong80–100Short, distinctive, sticks after one exposure.
• Good60–79Solid and workable; minor trade-offs.
• Fair40–59Usable but forgettable or hard to own.
• Weak0–39Reconsider; friction outweighs the upside.

Illustrative analysis for education. Namoly’s top band is Strong, and every number in a real report ships with a justification, a confidence signal, and a tip. Not checked here: trademark and social-handle availability.

The A-to-Z detail everyone misremembers

You will often read that “Amazon” was chosen because it goes from A to Z, like the selection and like the arrow in the logo. That arrow is real, but it came later, with a 2000 redesign; it is a meaning retrofitted onto the name, not the reason for it. The A-to-Z story is too neat, which is exactly why it spread, and it belongs in the same file as the Chevy Nova legend: repeated because it is tidy, not because it is the origin.

The honest sequence is the useful one. The name was chosen for scale and for its first letter; the smile-shaped arrow arrived years later and gave the name a second story worth telling. That is how strong names accrue meaning: you pick one that works mechanically, and the lore attaches itself afterward. You cannot reverse the order and reason your way to a good name from a clever backstory.

What founders can copy from the naming of Amazon

You will not stumble onto the perfect river metaphor on demand, but every decision that got Bezos there is reproducible on purpose:

• Say it before you sign itThe first legal name, “Cadabra”, died the moment a lawyer heard it as “cadaver” down a phone line. That is the say-it-out-loud test doing its job in real time: a name is a spoken asset first, and a syllable that mishears into something grim will mishear that way in every call, forever. Speak every candidate to a stranger before you register anything.
• Screen for connotation, not just meaningBezos liked “Relentless” and registered it; friends told him it sounded sinister, and he moved on (relentless.com still redirects to Amazon to this day). A name can be a perfectly good word and still carry the wrong feeling. The check that matters is not “what does it mean?” but “what does it make people feel when they hear it cold?”.
• Let the name promise the strategyHe did not pick the biggest river by accident. “Earth’s biggest bookstore” wanted a word that sounded vast, and “Amazon” pre-loaded the ambition into a single image before the company could deliver it. If your name can honestly signal the scale you are aiming for, it does marketing work for free.
• Borrow a word only with eyes openA real dictionary word buys instant familiarity and an evocative picture, but you pay for it twice: you inherit its prior meaning, and you can almost never own the exact-match .com. Amazon could absorb both costs in 1994. A new brand today should weigh a familiar word against a coinage it can actually own outright.

The usual caveat keeps this honest: the name did not build the company. Two decades of execution, logistics, and capital did. But the name never fought the mission, and a name that pre-loads your ambition and survives being said out loud is a quiet, compounding asset.

Frequently asked questions

Why is Amazon called Amazon?

Jeff Bezos named the company after the Amazon river, the largest in the world, to signal the largest possible selection. He was building “Earth’s biggest bookstore”, wanted a name that sounded vast, and also wanted one starting with “A” so it would land near the top of the alphabetical lists and web directories of the mid-1990s. He found the word in the dictionary and registered amazon.com on 1 November 1994.

What was Amazon originally going to be called?

The company was first incorporated in 1994 as “Cadabra, Inc.”, from “abracadabra”. Bezos dropped it after his lawyer misheard the name as “cadaver” over the phone. Other candidates he weighed included Relentless, Aard (to sit first alphabetically), Browse, and Bookstore, before he settled on Amazon.

Does Relentless.com go to Amazon?

Yes. Bezos registered relentless.com while naming the company and never let it go; typing it into a browser still redirects to Amazon today. He liked the word, but was talked out of it because people told him it sounded a little sinister for a shop.

Why did Bezos want a name starting with the letter A?

In the mid-1990s, online directories and listings were often alphabetical, so a name near the front of the alphabet was a small, free distribution advantage. It is why “Aard” was on his shortlist. “Amazon” satisfied the same instinct while also carrying the meaning he wanted, which is why it won.

Is Amazon a good brand name?

Measured on the four checks, it is a strong name with one soft spot. It is easy to say, easy to spell, highly distinctive, and travels well across languages. The catch is ownability: because it is a common dictionary word, its exact-match .com is the hard case to own, and Amazon secured it only by moving early. That is the trade-off of borrowing a real word.

How was this score calculated?

The numbers here are illustrative, built from the same four checks Namoly runs on any name: domain availability, memorability, phonetics, and cross-language safety, combined with the canonical weights (0.30, 0.25, 0.25, 0.20). The overall is the weighted mean of the sub-scores. To get a real, explained score for your own candidate, run it through the free tool.