When you see the word “Amazon”, what’s the first thing that springs to mind – the world’s biggest forest, the longest river or the largest internet retailer – and which do you consider most important?

These questions have risen to the fore in an arcane, but hugely important, debate about how to redraw the boundaries of the internet. Brazil and Peru have lodged objections to a bid made by the US e-commerce giant for a prime new piece of cyberspace: “.amazon”.

The Seattle-based company has applied for its brand to be a top-level domain name (currently .com), but the South American governments argue this would prevent the use of this internet address for environmental protection, the promotion of indigenous rights and other public interest uses.

Along with dozens of other disputed claims to names including “.patagonia” and “.shangrila”, the issue cuts to the heart of debates about the purpose and governance of the internet.

Until now, the differences between commercial, governmental and other types of identity were easily distinguished in every internet address by .com, .gov and 20 other categories.

But these categories – or generic top-level domains (gTLDs) as they are technically known – are about to undergo the biggest expansion since the start of the worldwide web more than 30 years ago.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) – a US-based non-profit organisation that plays a key role in cyberspace governance – has received bids (each reportedly worth almost $200,000 [£129,000]) for hundreds of new gTLDs to add to the existing 22.

Amazon has applied for dozens of new domains, including “.shop”, “.song”, “.book” and “.kindle”. But it’s most contentious application is for its own brand.

Brazil and Peru have called for the .amazon application to be withdrawn, saying a private company should not be assigned a name that denotes an important geographic area that spans their territories, and is also used for certain regions and cross-border organisations.

“Allowing private companies to register geographic names as gTLDs to reinforce their brand strategy or to profit from the meaning of these names does not serve, in our view, the public interest,” the Brazilian ministry of science and technology said.

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