Evian

This post is about what is NOT the origin of a name.

Evian water (French pronunciation ​evjɑ̃) is a brand of mineral water. Many people have noticed that the name is naive spelled backwards. The idea that comes along with that reversal is that this fancy bottled water and that the joke is on those naive consumers willing to pay a premium price for water.

But that is not true.

Evian is owned by Danone, a French multinational corporation that sells the mineral water and also a line of organic skin care products and a luxury resort in France under that name.

The origin goes back to 1789 when the Marquis of Lessert drank some water from the Sainte Catherine spring on the land of a M. Cachat. The marquis had been suffering from kidney and liver problems, but claimed that the water cured his ailments.

Still sold in glass bottles too

In 1859, it became a business, and in 1878 the French Ministry of Health actually authorized the bottling of "Cachat water" because of a recommendation by the Medicine Academy.

The water sold as Evian comes from several sources near Évian-les-Bains, on the south shore of Lake Geneva and was first sold in glass bottles in 1878.

In 1969, it started to be sold in plastic (PVC) bottles and it was introduced in 1978 to the U.S. market. In 1995, Evian switched to collapsible PET bottles, though it is still available in glass bottles too.