50 Popular Things That You Probably Didn't Know Originally Had Different Names

If it wasn’t for another company called ‘Firebird’ you would now be using your Internet Explorer to download ‘Firebird’ and not ‘Firefox’. According to the company, “It's similar to Firebird. It's easy to remember. It sounds good. It's unique. We like it," the company said.

If it wasn’t for a big script change, the Toy Story we know now would have been completely different. The famous character Buzz Lightyear, which was named in honour of astronaut Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, would have actually been called Lunar Larry. Wait, there’s more, Woody was actually supposed to be a jerk instead of the good guy/hero we all know and love.

Everyone’s favorite animated classic underwent a couple of name changes. The first attempt was ‘King of the Jungle’ but this particular name didn’t last long since there was no jungle in the movie and everything takes places on a savannah. Another option was ‘King of the Beasts’ but according to the film’s producer Don Hahn they wanted to concentrate on a simple story about a lion king, and this is where the famous name comes from.

Well this one is rather an easy one to guess, since 3,000 is the amount of money that Edward Lewis offers to the protagonist in the movie, Vivian Ward, for spending a week with him.

Imagine having a blue ribbon logo instead of a swoosh on your gym shorts? Well this could have been the icon that Nike was known for if it wasn’t for a change back in the 1971. The very well-known name ‘Nike’ was based on the Greek goddess of victory, and the famous logo, also known as the swoosh, symbolizes the wing of the goddess.

In a reddit post ‘I am Fred Durst of LIMP BIZKIT...Ask Me Anything’ Fred Durst answered some questions from his fans. One answer in particular received a lot of attention, where the vocalist revealed that his band’s name was almost Blood Fart: “The name Limp Bizkit came out in a riff session when deciding what to call the band. I wanted it to have the same roll off of the tongue as Led Zeppelin, but be so odd that you would have a hard time forgetting it. I remember things like Gimp Disco, Split D**kslit, B**ch Piglet, and somehow...Blood Fart. Plus, we never really took our name or purpose very serious considering the chances of succeeding were slim to none at that point.”

The movie Tangled was supposed to be called ‘Rapunzel Unbraided’ but reportedly the name was changed to appeal to a wider audience. "We did not want to be put in a box," the president of Pixar and Disney Animation studios said in an interview with Los Angeles Times. "Some people might assume it's a fairy tale for girls when it's not. We make movies to be appreciated and loved by everybody."

Only three weeks before publishing this iconic novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his editor a letter where he said that he was crazy for the title ‘Under the Red, White, And Blue’. According to the author, this title emphasized the importance of symbolism in the book. Later, Mr. Fitzgerald would say that the name could have been ‘Trimalchio’, and according to him the Great Gatsby title is only ‘ok.’ “My heart tells me I should have named it Trimalchio ... Gatsby is too much like Babbit and The Great Gatsby is weak because there’s no emphasis even ironically on his greatness or lack of it. However let it pass.”

Back in 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi began manufacturing Japanese playing cards in Kyoto. In 1947 Yamauchi began a distribution company called Marufuku Co. It was only in 1951 that the company renamed themselves to Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. and then to Nintendo Co., Ltd. in 1963.

Originally the movie ‘The Breakfast Club’ was supposed to be called ‘The Lunch Bunch,’ and when you think about it, maybe that’s what the movie should have been named since the film characters do in fact eat lunch together.

Back in 1953, when the frozen waffle was invented, the original inventors called them ‘Froffles’, but eventually people started referring to them as Eggo’s due to their egg flavor, which is exactly what they changed the name to in 1955.

‘Do you have a Confinity?’, never heard anyone saying that, right? Well, that’s because back in June of 2001 this huge worldwide company was renamed to Paypal. Its first name was a merge of the word confidence and infinity, but it seems they weren’t really confident about this name.

The first ever softball game was played back in 1887 between between Yale university and Harvard university students. During that time, the game was called indoor baseball but quickly enough, in 1889, the rules of the game were changed and it became an outdoor activity. Then, in 1895, this game was organized as an outdoor activity for firefighters and was known as ‘kitten ball’ or ‘diamond ball’ (other names included ‘lemon ball’, ‘pumpkin ball’, and ‘mush ball’), the name softball was finally set in 1926. This was also the period when the game became more popular around the United States.

You’d think that since the original name of the restaurant had ‘Pete’ in it, the creator was a Pete? Well you would be wrong, his name was Fred DeLuca. Then maybe his son’s name was Pete? No again, he was Jonathan. Then where does Pete come from? Well, as it turns out, back in 1965 Fred DeLuca borrowed $1000 dollars from his friend Peter Buck to start his own fast food restaurant called ‘Pete’s Super Submarines’, then, 3 years later, the name was changed to ‘Subway’. Even though we are sure that Pete’s a great guy for lending all that money, the name Subway sounds way better, don’t you agree?

Back in 1995 when the site was launched, it was initially called AuctionWeb and was part of an umbrella company called eBay Internet. The company had three other sites that included a travel site, a personal shipper site, and a site about the Ebola virus. Later, in 1997, the company changed the domain name to eBay since that was how the media referred to AuctionWeb.

The hilarious series New Girl starring Zooey Deschannel and Max Greenfield, was supposed to be called ‘Chicks and D*cks’, but the writers were asked to change the name by the Fox network, since the original title seemed a little bit risky.

According to the ‘Star Wars’ documentary ‘Empire of Dreams’, producer Howard Kazanjian wanted to call the movie ‘Revenge of the Jedi’ instead of ‘Return of the Jedi.’ According to Kazanjian, ‘Return’ sounded a bit weak. So, even though he did not agree with the producer at first, George Lucas did change the name to ‘Revenge of the Jedi’. But just weeks before releasing the movie, Lucas change the title back to ‘Return of the Jedi.’ Why? Because Jedi does not take revenge.

It’s every stag parties dream to visit a Playboy mansion, well, if it wasn’t for the last minute name-change, the now infamous Playboy magazine would have been named Stag Party. According to Hugh Hefner, he was influenced by a cartoon book that he had. “I was looking for a male figure of some kind and I thought of an animal in tuxedo will set us apart," Hefner said in an interview. But just before publishing their magazine, the company received a letter from Stag magazine which said that the name was an infringement on their title. Without anything else left to do Hefner quickly changed it to Playboy.

Not only is it one of the most hated Halloween candies, but Candy Corn could also have had a very weird name. Around the 1880’s was the first time people started giving out this weird sugar and cornstarch mixture to each other during Halloween, and back then it was aptly called ‘Chicken Feed’. So, not only was it not the tastiest candy, but it also had the most appetite reducing name.

Even though there is no discussion that Best Buy sounds way better than Sound of Music, there is actually a rather interesting story on how the store ended up with its current name. Back in 1981 a tornado tore down the Sound Of Music’s most profitable store, so they decided to have a huge sale selling all the damaged goods. To encourage people to buy, they advertised by promising ‘best buys’ on all of their products, funny enough all of this resulted in incredibly good sales so the company renamed themselves ‘Best Buy’.