Guess the Invention From Its Terrible First Name

Caleb Bradham, a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina, mixed a sweet fountain drink in 1893 and simply named it after himself. In 1898 he renamed it Pepsi-Cola, a name widely believed to reflect his claim that the drink helped digestion.

The new name sounded energetic and modern, and it helped the drink grow from a single pharmacy counter into one of the most recognized brands in the world.

According to the well-known story, young Frank Epperson left a cup of sweet drink with a stirring stick outside on a cold night in 1905. By morning, it had frozen solid around the stick. Years later, in 1924, he patented the idea as the “Epsicle,” a mix of his last name and “icicle.”

His own children reportedly called it “Pop's 'sicle,” since their dad made it. That family nickname became Popsicle, the name the world remembers.

General Mills launched this cereal in 1941 as CheeriOats. A few years later, in 1945, the name was shortened to Cheerios. The change is commonly linked to a dispute with a rival company over the use of the word “Oats.”

It's a great reminder that names aren't only about style. Legal rights and trademarks can force a company to rethink its branding.

Inventor Edwin Perkins first sold a liquid fruit syrup called Fruit Smack. The problem was that the glass bottles were heavy and could break or leak during shipping, which made mailing them expensive.

In 1927, Perkins found a clever fix: he removed the liquid and sold the flavor as a powder in light paper packets. He called it Kool-Ade, later spelled Kool-Aid. Solving a shipping problem gave the product both a new form and a new name.

A machine for spinning sugar into fine threads was developed by dentist William Morrison and candy maker John C. Wharton. Their “Fairy Floss” sold in huge numbers at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.

In the United States, “cotton candy” gradually became the common name in the 20th century. But the original name never fully disappeared: in Australia, people still call it fairy floss today, while in the UK it's known as candy floss.

In 1904, Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game. Surprisingly, she designed it to teach a lesson: she wanted to show how owning large amounts of land could make a few people rich while others struggled to pay rent.

Over the following decades, players made homemade versions with local street names. In 1935, Parker Brothers released a version called Monopoly, and for many years the game's creation was credited to Charles Darrow. Magie's role became widely recognized much later.

Inventor Fred Morrison designed a plastic flying disc during the 1950s, when Americans were fascinated by UFOs and space. He named it the Pluto Platter to cash in on the “flying saucer” craze. The toy company Wham-O bought the design in 1957.

Wham-O soon renamed it after hearing that college students in New England were tossing empty pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Company. The spelling was changed slightly to Frisbee, and a sporting legend was born.

Engineer Lonnie Johnson, who worked on projects for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, came up with the idea in the early 1980s while experimenting with a cooling system that used water. When a test nozzle shot a powerful stream across the room, he realized it could make an amazing toy.

It first went on sale in 1990 as the Power Drencher, then was renamed Super Soaker a year later. The catchier name, along with its powerful spray, turned it into one of the best-selling toys of its era.

The game was developed in the mid-1960s under the working name Pretzel, a fitting description of what happens to players' bodies. When Milton Bradley brought it to market in 1966, it was renamed Twister.

Sales took off after the game was played on national late-night television that same year. Its simple idea, using your body as the game piece, made it a party classic.

French electrician André Cassagnes invented a screen where turning two knobs moved a stylus that scraped away a fine powder coating, leaving a line behind. He called it L'Écran Magique, or “the magic screen.”

The American company Ohio Art licensed the toy and released it in 1960 as Etch A Sketch. The rhyming English name was simple and descriptive, and it helped the toy become a holiday best-seller.

Bette Nesmith Graham was a secretary in Texas who was frustrated that typos on electric typewriters were hard to erase. Inspired by painters who covered mistakes with more paint, she began using a white water-based paint to dab over errors.

Coworkers wanted some too, and in 1956 she started selling it as Mistake Out. She later renamed it Liquid Paper, built a successful company, and eventually sold it to Gillette in 1979 for tens of millions of dollars.

At 3M, scientist Spencer Silver created an unusually weak, reusable adhesive in 1968, but nobody knew what to do with it. Years later, his colleague Art Fry used it to make bookmarks that stayed put in his choir hymnal without damaging the pages.

3M test-marketed the product in 1977 as Press 'n Peel, and sales were disappointing. After the company handed out free samples so people could try it, demand grew. In 1980 it launched nationwide under a new name: Post-it Notes.

Inventor Whitcomb Judson patented a hook-and-eye fastening device in 1893, often called the clasp locker, as an alternative to tedious shoe buttons. It was clever but unreliable and tended to pop open.

Engineer Gideon Sundback greatly improved the design in the 1910s, creating the interlocking-teeth system we know today. The name “zipper” came in the 1920s, when the B.F. Goodrich company used it for rubber boots that closed with a satisfying “zip.”

While working with radar equipment at the company Raytheon in the 1940s, engineer Percy Spencer noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. He realized the microwaves produced by the equipment could heat food.

Raytheon's first commercial microwave oven, introduced in 1947, was called the Radarange. It was nearly as tall as a person, weighed hundreds of pounds, and was mainly used by restaurants and ships. Smaller home models came later, and in everyday speech the general name “microwave” took over.

Inventor Irving Naxon patented an electric bean-cooking device in 1940. He was reportedly inspired by his grandmother's stories of a slow-cooked stew prepared in a shared village oven. His company sold it as the Naxon Beanery.

In 1970, the Rival Manufacturing Company bought the design, updated it, and relaunched it in 1971 as the Crock-Pot. The new name sounded homey and practical, and it arrived just as busy families wanted easy, set-it-and-forget-it meals.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin's early search project was called BackRub because it ranked web pages by studying “backlinks,” the links pointing to a page from other sites. The idea was brilliant, even if the name wasn't.

In 1997 they switched to Google, a play on “googol,” the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. It reflected their goal of organizing an enormous amount of information.

Jeff Bezos started his company in 1994 as Cadabra, inspired by the magic word “abracadabra.” The problem? According to a story often told about the company's early days, a lawyer heard the name over the phone and thought he said “cadaver.”

Bezos changed the name to Amazon, after the world's largest river by volume, suggesting enormous scale. As a bonus, a name starting with “A” appeared near the top of alphabetical lists, which was useful in the early web.

Kevin Systrom's first app, Burbn, let users check in at locations, make plans, and share photos. It had many features, but people mostly used just one: photo sharing.

Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger stripped the app down to focus on photos and filters and relaunched it in 2010 as Instagram, a blend of “instant camera” and “telegram.” It's one of tech's best-known examples of a successful “pivot.”

Jerry Yang and David Filo started a list of their favorite websites in 1994 and gave it the very literal name “Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web.” As the list grew, so did its popularity, and it clearly needed a shorter name.

They chose Yahoo!, a word they liked partly because of its use in the classic novel Gulliver's Travels. Short, playful, and memorable, it became one of the first giant brands of the internet age.

Inside Microsoft, the project that became Windows was developed under the working name Interface Manager. It was accurate, but it sounded more like a job title than a product people would get excited about.

Before the product was announced in 1983, Microsoft's team chose “Windows,” a simple word that described the rectangular boxes users would see on screen. The first version was released in 1985.