It was sometime in the 1940s when Germany’s auto market was predominantly luxury cars. Google actually is the incorrect spelling of GooGol – Or the story of how Volkswagen got its name. That sounded a bit murder-y and Bezos backed off and ultimately named it Amazon. He called his lawyer and told him over the phone, who heard Cadaver and not Cadabra. There’s a famous story about Jeff Bezos who wanted to call Amazon “Cadabra”, inspired by Abracadabra – a magical new world of online shopping. Brad’s Drink would not have been a multi-billion dollar multinational company. Would you have a “Brad’s Drink” if it was called that? But that’s what Pepsi’s original name was. Remember the name It’s not easy to come up with a brand name and make it catchy or something that leaves a lasting impression. So much so that it would annoy you a lot and you might want someone to paraphrase the iconic Amitabh Bachchan line from “Sholay” and say “tumhaara naam kya hai, Twitter?”. One more X and it would have been problematic. X this, X that, X number of users, here an X, there an X, everywhere an X X. X and Musk - the company X and not someone we didn’t want to name - are going to push hard for the name X to replace Twitter in the lexicon. X may or may not catch on but it is likely for a while people are still going to call it Twitter. What are they now? Xerati (sounds like a cheap copy of Maserati) or Xeeps (that sounds creepy and gives you the creeps, no?). Twitter had Twitterati or the cringe-inducing “tweeps or tweeple”. may sue once they sort out the messy writers’ strike). What are we supposed to say when asking someone to come on Twitter and check something? “X pe aaja” or what if you don’t want to name someone who said something on X? “X said something on X…” Or are the men who work at X called X-Men now (oops, Warner Bros. Better sense prevailed and X became PayPal but not before Musk had a rather cool email ID real question is Y Now, Twitter is X and it is confounding on so many levels and raises so many questions. There are enough stories about Musk fighting tooth and nail over keeping the name X. Elon Musk’s fascination with X goes back more than decades as one of his earliest companies was called X.com - which later became PayPal. Twitter ceases to exist anymore and is now known as X. In the last week or so, a rather iconic brand name was laid to rest by none other than one of the world’s richest men. For brand names, it is a different story altogether. Those are nicknames though and are more like terms of endearment and can be random. Though to be fair, nicknames across India are way too random as Piku, Chiku, Sonu, Monu, Babli, Chhutki would testify. The Bengalis have a penchant for keeping rather funny or unusual “daak naam” for their kids. Mimoh’s “Mi” came from Michael Jackson and “Moh” came from Mohammed Ali - two of his father’s favourite icons. Take the case of Mithun Chakraborty’s son who is named Mimoh Chakraborty. Names, after all, are quite a personal choice. You can call it X, Y or Twitter - as long as it works, is successful, and makes money. Or as they say in Hindi “naam mein kya rakha hai”. “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” uttered Juliet in William Shakespeare’s eternal classic “Romeo and Juliet”.
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