Jeff Bezos wanted to call Amazon’s Alexa assistant Finch, Samantha or Jacklyn – after his mum!
- Thinking up a catchy name to rival Apple’s Siri wasn’t an easy or quick task – and not all of Bezos’ own suggestions were suitably sonorous
- Another rejected name the tech billionaire brought to the table was Friday, the name of the personal assistant in Robinson Crusoe
These days, for many households it might be hard to remember a time before Alexa, Amazon’s all-knowing voice assistant.
But “Alexa” wasn’t the first name Jeff Bezos and his team at Amazon came up with back in the early 2010s, according to Brad Stone’s new book, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.
According to Stone, Bezos was passionate about building a smart computer that users could control with their voice, which is what led to the creation of the first Amazon Echo device. Early on, the team realized they needed a “wake word” that would make the device start listening. The word would need to have three syllables, a “distinct combination of phonemes” so as not to unnecessarily rouse the device, and an easily marketable name, like Apple’s Siri.
In order to figure out a name, the team wrote ideas down on flash cards that were spread across a conference room table for Bezos to peruse, according to Stone.
Bezos had his own suggestions, including:
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Finch, the name of a fantasy book by author Jeff VanderMeer
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Friday, the name of the personal assistant in Robinson Crusoe
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Samantha, the main character from Bewitched, a show about a witch who marries a mortal and uses her powers to complete household tasks
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Amazon, which Bezos believed could help fuel feelings of goodwill toward the company
