SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Amazon is the world’s biggest online retailer. It is also the world’s largest rain forest.

The question is who owns the name.

This is the core of an epic battle between the tech behemoth Amazon.com and eight South American countries that contain parts of the rain forest.

At stake is the domain name .amazon, and who should control it on the internet.

Amazon.com could use the name to advance its branding and marketing. But the nations objecting to the company’s request are concerned about a corporation symbolically taking control of a name synonymous with their heritage, as well as more mundane matters like whether their own tourism industries would lose the opportunity to use trip.amazon, hotels.amazon and other domain names.

“It’s technical, but it’s also very emotional,” said Achilles Emilio Zaluar Neto, the director of technology issues at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, noting that Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com’s founder, named his company after the Amazon River.