And from the "Final Word on Dogmatic Factual Compendia of Food History", the following:

Oreos
According to the records of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Oreo brand cookies were introduced to the American public by the National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco) on March 6, 1912. It is registration #0093009. Nabisco is now owned by Kraft Foods.

"On April 2, 1912, the company's [National Biscuit Company] operations department announced to its managers and sales agents that it was preparing "to offer to the trade...three entirely new varieties of the highest calss biscuit in a new style...The three varieties of biscuit...will be known as the Trio. "The varieties comprising the Trio' are as follows, namely: Oreo Biscuit--two beautifully embossed chocolate-flavored wafers with a rich cream fillling at 30 cents per pound. Mother Goose Biscuit--a rich, high class biscuit bearing impressions of the Mother Goose legends at 20 cents per pound. Veronese Biscuit--delicious, hard sweet biscuit of beautiful design and high quality at 20 cents per pound. This Trio is an exciting innovation, and we are quite sure it will immediately appeal to public favor...

...two members of the trio most lavishy promoted in the inital announcement have since disappeared. But the third, Oreo, was evidently just the kind of cookie the American consuming public wanted. Somewnat similar to a previous product named "Bouquet," the Oreo consisted of two firm chocoalte cookies with rich vanilla frosting in the middle. The first Oreos were slightly larger than today's product, but always round. Within a short time Oreo, which resembled an English biscuit, became a fantastically good seller among NBC sweet goods...The origin of the name is nto really known, although one possibility is that it came from the Greek oreo, meaning hill or mountain. Supposedly, either in testing or when the product was first produced, it was shaped like a baseball mound or hill-hence, an oreo. This has a certain validity in view of A.W. Green's [company executive] tendency toward classical names. Oreo was officially registered in 1913 as "Oreo Biscuit." By 1921 it had become "Oreo Sandwich" and by 1948 "Oreo Creme Sandwich." Variations have been tried--a vanilla Oreo, a single-cracker Oreo, and in th e1920s a lemon-filled Oreo was introduced. The size has undergone changes, too. Today's is about midway between the largest and the smallest. Through all shifts in public preferences, Oreo has remained one of the nation's most consistent favorites. As frequently happens with popular products, there are people who fancy that they contributed to is creation. An Oreo admirer once wrote to the company "During the early 1920's you have a contest offering a cash reward for a suitable name for this particualr cookie. I entered this contest and submitted the name Oreo. Time passed, I learned or heard nothing concerning the matter, so gave it no further thought until this past Sunday night....If you will kindly check your records concerning the said contest, I am sure that in them you will find I am the one who submitted the trade name, Oreo." The company answered, "We think that you must be confused about the origin of the trademark Oreo. It was not originated as the result of a contest in the early 1920's or at any other time. It was originated by our advertising department, and first used on March 6, 1912."
---Out of the Cracker Barrel: From Animal Crackers to ZuZu's, William Cahn [Simon & Schuster:New York] 1969 (p. 142-4)


Proof is as proof does, eh?

A