Amazon, one of the world's most valuable companies by market capitalization, was originally founded under the name Cadabra.
Jeff Bezos incorporated the business in Washington state in 1994 as Cadabra, Inc. The name was inspired by “abracadabra,” but Bezos changed it after a lawyer reportedly misheard it as “cadaver.” He later chose Amazon, associating the company with the immense Amazon River and the idea of broad scale.
The online bookstore launched in July 1995. Amazon eventually expanded into marketplaces, cloud computing through Amazon Web Services, digital media, devices, logistics, and physical retail.
Relentless was another name considered by Bezos and remains associated with an Amazon-owned web domain. The company was not founded as Nile or BookMall, and its early business was books rather than general merchandise.