Quiz: Can You Guess What These Popular Brands Were Originally Called?

Have you ever struggled to remember the name of someone you’ve met only once or twice before? That probably doesn’t happen when you think of the home of the Happy Meal: Everyone knows McDonald’s and their signature Big Mac. That’s because certain brands have become embedded in our culture.

While McDonald’s seems like an obvious choice for a restaurant owned by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald, it was originally a little longer: The duo called their business McDonald’s Famous Bar-B-Que when they opened their first location in 1940. And the Big Mac wasn’t always named the Big Mac. See if you can figure out what the original name was for the landmark burger along with other iconic brands.

Most of the time, brand names are chosen because they’re catchy, but sometimes, they have a deeper meaning: 7-Eleven, for example, was named for its original operating hours of 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., which were considered unusual business hours in the 1940s. (The company, of course, kept the name even when they expanded to being open around the clock.) The Gap takes its cue from what founders Donald and Doris Fisher considered a generational gap between older people and their hip young clientele, who came in to shop for Levi's and records.

The Gap beats Donald’s original name for their store: He wanted to call it Pants and Discs.

Read More About Famous Brand Names: