"Gasoline" is cited (under the spelling "gasolene") from 1865 in the Oxford English Dictionary. The trademark Gasoline was never registered, and eventually became generic in North America and the Philippines.
The word "petrol" has been used in English to refer to raw petroleum since the sixteenth century. However, it was first used to refer to the refined fuel in 1892, when it was registered as a trade name by British wholesaler Carless, Capel & Leonard at the suggestion of Frederick Richard Simms, as a contraction of 'St. Peter's Oil.' Carless's competitors used the term "motor spirit" until the 1930s. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that this usage may have been inspired by the French pétrole.
In many countries, gasoline has a colloquial name derived from that of the chemical benzene (e.g., German Benzin, Dutch Benzine). In other countries, especially in those portions of Latin America where Spanish predominates (i.e., most of the region except Brazil), it has a colloquial name derived from that of the chemical naphtha (e.g., Argentine/Uruguaian/Paraguaian nafta). However the standard Spanish word is 'gasolina'.
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