Amazon was originally registered in 1994 under the name Cadabra.
Jeff Bezos founded the online company in July 1994, initially operating it from his home in Bellevue, Washington. The business began as an online bookstore because books offered a large, internationally distributed catalog that a physical shop could not easily stock. Bezos incorporated the company as Cadabra, a shortened form of “abracadabra.”
The name changed after a lawyer reportedly misheard or misunderstood “Cadabra” as “cadaver.” Bezos also wanted a name suggesting breadth and scale. He chose Amazon, referring to the vast South American river, and registered the new name in 1994. The company’s early website launched in July 1995.
Amazon is often described as having started in a garage, but its earliest operations were conducted from Bezos’s Bellevue house, with the garage used for equipment and work. The company expanded from books into electronics, cloud computing, advertising, logistics, entertainment, and other industries, helping make its market capitalization one of the world’s largest.