Which Herman Melville novel helped inspire the Starbucks name?

The Herman Melville novel that helped inspire the Starbucks name is Moby-Dick.

The founders remembered Starbuck, the chief mate aboard Captain Ahab’s ship in Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick. They liked the sound of the name and adapted it into “Starbucks,” adding the plural ending that became the coffee company’s trademark. The company was founded in Seattle in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker.

The literary connection was not the only part of the naming process. The founders were also considering “Starbo,” a name associated with a mining location in the Cascade Range. “Starbuck” emerged when the group connected that word with Melville’s novel. Gordon Bowker later emphasized that Moby-Dick was not a direct business inspiration; the name simply sounded appropriate for a coffee company.

Starbuck is a relatively cautious, practical character in the novel, unlike the obsessive Captain Ahab. The other options are also Melville titles or related works: White-Jacket and Typee are novels, while Billy Budd is a novella. But none supplied Starbucks’ famous namesake.