The Surprising Reasons These Companies and Brands Changed Their Names

Following a merger with American oil company Amoco, British Petroleum decided it was time for a rebrand. The company opted to remove the word “petroleum” and go by its initials, BP. This was done to give the brand a more environmentally friendly tone, along with its “beyond petroleum” slogan.

However, this green image was short-lived, as the company received huge backlash following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Pepsi was invented in the late 1800s by a North Carolina pharmacist named Caleb Bradham. He operated a soda fountain, and his most popular beverage was his own concoction, which he called Brad’s Drink.

As the drink began to get more popular, Bradham wanted a better name for his product. He eventually settled on Pepsi-Cola, though sources differ on why. Some say it was because the beverage included the enzyme pepsin, though others maintain it was because Pepsi was supposed to aid with indigestion, an affliction which is formally known as “dyspepsia.”

Yahoo! was one of the largest internet companies from the dotcom boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. But in its infancy, Yahoo! started as a list of websites organized and categorized by its founders Jerry Yang and David Filo as a grad school project at Stanford. The pair called this catalog “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.”

As the site grew in popularity, the pair decided they needed a new name and landed on Yahoo!. They joked that it is actually an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”