Great question. It is thought to have been influenced by the trademark "Cazeline" or "Gazeline" for the surname of British publisher, coffee merchant, and social campaigner John Cassell. He marketed a product called Patent Cazeline Oil.
"Gasoline" is an American word that denotes fuel for automobiles. The term is thought to have been influenced by the trademark "Cazeline" or "Gazeline", named after the surname of British publisher, coffee merchant, and social campaigner John Cassell. On 27 November 1862, Cassell placed an advertisement in The Times of London:
The Patent Cazeline Oil, safe, economical, and brilliant [...] possesses all the requisites which have so long been desired as a means of powerful artificial light.
This is the earliest occurrence of the word to have been found. Cassell discovered that a shopkeeper in Dublin named Samuel Boyd was selling counterfeit cazeline and wrote to him to ask him to stop. Boyd did not reply and changed every 'C' into a 'G', thus coining the word "gazeline".[11] The Oxford English Dictionary dates its first recorded use to 1863 when it was spelled "gasolene". The term "gasoline" was first used in North America in 1864.[12]
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