One of the most famous cookie names in the world is a mystery, and the company that owns it has never cleared it up.
The facts that are known are few. The National Biscuit Company, now Nabisco, developed the "Oreo Biscuit" in early 1912. It was made at the company's factory in Chelsea, New York, in the building that is now Chelsea Market. The name was trademarked on March 14, 1912. The product became the "Oreo Sandwich" in 1921.
The cookie was not original. Wikipedia describes it as launched in imitation of Hydrox, a cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookie that the Sunshine company introduced in 1908. Hydrox was named for hydrogen and oxygen, to suggest purity. The copy did so well that many people now assume Hydrox is the imitation.
Where "Oreo" came from is anyone's guess, and there are several guesses.
One says it comes from French or, "gold," after the original packaging. Accounts differ on the color: Tasting Table says the packaging was gold, while Gizmodo describes a yellow tin with a glass cover.
A second points to Greek oros, "mountain." The writer Charles Panati suggested the cookie was first meant to have a peaked, mountain-like top.
A third reads the name as a picture of the cookie. Two O's stand for the two chocolate wafers, with "re" from "cream" in the middle.
The pastry chef and writer Stella Parks has a more pointed theory. The Hydrox cookie carried an embossed flower, and she argues it was a laurel of the genus Oreodaphne. If she is right, Nabisco took the name from its rival's decoration as well as copying the cookie.
None of these has been confirmed. Mondelez, which now owns the brand, has not answered repeated questions about the name, according to a report from ABC4. Tasting Table suggests it may have been chosen simply because it was fun to say and easy to remember.
The original 1912 design, Gizmodo reports, showed the word "Oreo" with a wreath around the edge. The name was right there on every cookie, and it still explained nothing.