Ἀμαζών

The Amazons were a legendary nation of female warriors described throughout Greek literature, from Homer's Iliad to Herodotus's Histories. They were said to live at the eastern or northern edges of the known world — in Scythia, in Anatolia, on the shores of the Black Sea — forming a matriarchal society of skilled archers and horsewomen who occasionally warred with the Greeks. Heracles fought them as one of his twelve labors. Achilles killed their queen Penthesilea at Troy. The Greeks called them Amazones (singular Amazōn), and the etymology has been debated for centuries: one folk etymology claimed it meant 'without breast,' from a- (without) and mazos (breast), based on the story that Amazons removed one breast to draw a bow more easily. Modern scholars dismiss this as false etymology; the name is more likely non-Greek in origin, possibly from an Iranian or Caucasian language.

Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, treated Amazons as a historical rather than purely mythological people, associating them with the Sauromatian women of the Pontic steppe who rode horses, carried weapons, and were buried with military equipment. Modern archaeology has confirmed that women warriors were indeed common among the nomadic Scythian and Sarmatian cultures of the Eurasian steppe — not mythological exaggerations but historical realities that Greek imagination transformed into a parallel civilization. DNA analysis of burial mounds has found women interred with weapons alongside men, giving the Amazon myths an unexpected empirical foundation.

The name crossed to South America through a specific encounter. In 1541–42, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana led the first European navigation of the great South American river, which the local Tupinambá people called various names. During the journey, Orellana's men reported a battle with indigenous fighters who included women — or who were joined by women warriors who reminded the Spanish of the mythological Amazons. Orellana named the river Río Amazonas, and the name adhered permanently. The Amazon is the world's largest river by discharge, draining 40 percent of South America.

In 1994, Jeff Bezos named his online bookstore Amazon, selecting the name for reasons that were explicitly geographical and mythological: the Amazon river was the biggest, most voluminous river in the world, and Bezos intended his company to be the biggest, most voluminous retailer. He also appreciated that the name started with A, which in the early internet era meant it would appear near the top of alphabetical directory listings. The warrior women of Greek myth, filtered through a Spanish conquistador's battle memories and a Brazilian river's name, became the brand identity of global e-commerce.