My primary understanding of Cognito was that it was a great way to turn social or developer login into temporary AWS credentials with a specified role, allowing AWS apis to be safely used client side.

Personally I find that Cognito is a great name, which represent well the big picture and challenge ls of identity issues.on the web.

Disclosure : I am Founder of oauth.io to what Cognito is compare.

About Cognito, now I can understand what they are trying to mean.