Intriguing Stories Behind The Names of These 10 Famous Brands

1. Pepsi: The founder of Pepsi, Caleb Davis Bradham, originally wanted to become a doctor. However, personal circumstances forced him to give up his dream, and he became a pharmacist instead. His original invention, known as "Brad's Drink," was made from a mix of sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, and nutmeg. Three years later, Bradham renamed his drink, which he believed aided digestion, to "Pepsi-Cola," taken from the word "dyspepsia", meaning indigestion.

2. Google: Google's name emerged from a brainstorming session at Stanford University. Founder Larry Page was coming up with ideas for a massive data-index website with other graduate students, Business Insider reported. One of the suggestions was "googolplex"- one of the largest describable numbers. The name "Google" came about after one of the students accidentally spelled it wrong. Page then registered his company with this name.

3. ZARA: Zara founder Amancio Ortega originally named his company after the 1964 film "Zorba the Greek. But this didn't last long. The first store, which opened in La Coruña in 1975, happened to be two blocks down from a bar called Zorba, The New York Times reported. Ortega had already made the mold for the letters of his sign when the bar owner told him that it was too confusing for them to have the same name. In the end, Ortega ended up rearranging the letters to make the closest word he could come up with — hence Zara

4. IKEA: IKEA's name is an acronym of the founder's name Ingvar Kamprad, and the family farm's name where he was born Elmtaryd, and finally his hometown of Agunnaryd to the south of the country.

5. GAP: The first Gap store opened in 1969 with the goal of selling good jeans. The name referred to the generation gap between adults and kids.

6. Amazon: When Amazon first launched in 1995, founder Jeff Bezos found it challenging to find a name for his brand. Bezos wanted to call his online bookstore Cadabra, according to Brad Stone's book. But Amazon's first lawyer, Todd Tarbert, managed to convince him that the name sounded too similar to "Cadaver." Bezos finally settled on Amazon, named after the largest river in the world, and incorporated an image of the river in the company's first logo.

7. Häagen-Dazs: Reuben Mattus, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, named his ice-cream company Häagen-Dazs as a way to pay tribute to Denmark, according to an interview with the Jewish news publication Tablet Magazine. But the name doesn't actually mean anything. "The only country which saved the Jews during World War II was Denmark, so I put together a totally fictitious Danish name and had it registered," Mattus said.

8. Rolex: Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, wanted a brand name that could be pronounced in any language, Business Insider reported. "I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way," said Wilsdorf, according to Rolex. "This gave me some hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, a genie whispered 'Rolex' in my ear."

9. Adidas: If you, like me, thought Adidas stood for "All Day I Dream About Soccer," you're wrong. It turns out the athletics-apparel brand is named after its founder, Adolf Dassler, who

Nike: The sports famous brand was named after the Greek Goddess of Victory.