Names That Nearly Were
“Was Xbox always called Xbox?”
My son and I were watching a documentary about the Xbox when we learned the name was only ever meant to be temporary. It turns out a lot of famous names were nearly something else entirely — some ridiculous, some forgotten, some saved by a misheard word or a trademark search that ran out of time.
- LB-NAM-001 Xbox The Xbox name was a working nickname meant to be replaced. Marketing tested better names, and the placeholder beat them all.
- LB-NAM-002 Bluetooth Bluetooth was a temporary codename borrowed from a 10th-century Danish king. The intended names ran into trouble, so the king stayed.
- LB-NAM-003 Sherrinford Holmes and Ormond Sacker Arthur Conan Doyle's first notes name his detective Sherrinford Holmes and his friend Ormond Sacker.
- LB-NAM-004 James Bond, ornithologist Ian Fleming named his spy after the author of a bird book, because it was the plainest name he could find.
- LB-NAM-005 Pansy O'Hara For most of the time Margaret Mitchell spent writing Gone with the Wind, her heroine was called Pansy.
- LB-NAM-006 Trimalchio in West Egg Fitzgerald cycled through titles like Trimalchio in West Egg and Gold-Hatted Gatsby, and was still trying to change it weeks before publication.
- LB-NAM-007 The Last Man in Europe Orwell's working title for Nineteen Eighty-Four was The Last Man in Europe. He hesitated between the two until late in the writing.
- LB-NAM-008 Cadabra Amazon was first incorporated as Cadabra, as in abracadabra, until a lawyer heard it as 'cadaver'.
- LB-NAM-009 BackRub Google began as a search project called BackRub. Its new name came from the number googol, misspelled while checking a web address.
- LB-NAM-010 Brad's Drink A North Carolina pharmacist's fountain drink was called Brad's Drink until 1898, when he renamed it Pepsi-Cola.