Origin of "Oreo"?

[Jinx]

I was just wondering how the term "Oreo" came to be associated with a sandwich cookie?

[Podkayne]

The Perfect Master speaks:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a980508.html

[Berkut]

So does someone else.

[friedo]

Googling for "oreo cookie history" yields this.

So how did the Oreo get its name? The people at Nabisco aren't quite sure. Some believe that the cookie's name was taken from the French word for gold, "or" (the main color on early Oreo packages). Others claim the name stemmed from the shape of a hill-shaped test version; thus naming the cookie in Greek for mountain, "oreo." Still others believe the name is a combination of taking the "re" from "cream" and placing it between the two "o"s in "chocolate" - making "o-re-o." And still others believe that the cookie was named Oreo because it was short and easy to pronounce.

[Fear Itself]

So why does the Oreo symbol stamped on every cookie have a little TV antenna on it?

[lel]

The history of the Oreo cookie says:

So how did the Oreo get its name? The people at Nabisco aren't quite sure.

Most websites seem to follow this trend, providing much speculation but few definitive answers. In fact, this article seems to be one of the only sources which attempts to give a definitive origin for the name "Oreo":

Like Spam, the origin of the Oreo's peculiar name has been the subject of endless speculation. (Spam, in fact, is a conflation of the words spice and ham). According to Nabisco historians, the Oreo was not named after the Greek word oreo, meaning "mountain." Nabisco's pride and joy was named by taking the "re" out of cream and squishing it, sandwich-style, between the two "o's" from the word chocolate.

Unfortunately, they never mention who these Nabisco historians are who say that this is the real origin of the name "Oreo."

Sadly, the official Oreo website is silent on the matter.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally posted by Fear Itself
So why does the Oreo symbol stamped on every cookie have a little TV antenna on it?

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Nabisco
Nabisco's logo is made up of a particular symbol called a colophon, inside a red triangle, placed on the upper left corner of their products. The colophon, a cross with two bars and an oval, was a 15th century Venetian printers' symbol which stood for the triumph of the moral and spiritual over the evil and material. The company chose it to reflect its commitment to give consumers the freshest, highest quality biscuit products possbile. The symbol, now oval, used to be circular, and "NABISCO" has appeared within the oval since 1941 (when the company officially became known as Nabisco}.