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Why Such Unimaginative Nomenclature? 153

Posted by Cliff from the refill-the-bottle-of-creative-juices dept.
apoplectic asks: "Pick a word. A noun would be nice, but not required. Now, imagine a potentially meaningful adjective or other nebbish modifier, select the first letter, and append this to either the beginning or the end of the noun you originally chose. Some examples, include: JBoss, WebL, GStreamer, eMachine, iPod, and of course the XBox. I realize that the exceptions greatly outweigh this rule, but this does seem to be a disproportionately invoked naming standard that lacks a little 'je ne sais quoi'. Why is this so common? Do you really like this 'standard', or is this like something touched on by an episode of Futurama? Have, we have run out of names that have yet to be copyrighted, and all we are left with is Poppler -- or some hideous cryptic name from the aforementioned 'UName' naming standard. Why does it seem as if quite a few applications, along with many a geeky item, follow such unimaginative naming conventions?"
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Why Such Unimaginative Nomenclature? More

Why Such Unimaginative Nomenclature?

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  • ..uhm (Score:5, Funny)

    by XiC ( 207670 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:50AM (#7971752)
    iDunno

    • All the computer guys that have been around long enough to produce commercial release stuff grew up in a world of eight character filenames.

      Which is a better product name:
      XBox
      Incred~1

      The second one is 'Incredible Game Box' but old school computer guys automagically trunc that to Incred~1.
      • Very true...I still cringe when I see filenames longer than that.
      • The second one is 'Incredible Game Box' but old school computer guys automagically trunc that to Incred~1

        Actually, Incred~1 is a computer generated truncation specific to vfat. the old school guys would abbreviate to something like INCRDGAM.BOX

        IIRC only dos and cp/m had the 8.3 limitation.

        I broke the 8.3 habit at earliest possible opportunity (OS/2 Warp, 1995)

    • When I was in college, I joked about starting up a band with some friends, and calling ourselves [b]iDunno[/b].

      • Person 1: Who is that playing in the bar?
      • Person 2: iDunno
      • Person 1: Well, do they at least have fliers up somewhere with their name on it?
      • Person 2: Yeah, iDunno!
      • Person 1: Yeah, I know, you've told me that already!

  • Oh come on, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MoOsEb0y ( 2177 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:51AM (#7971753)
    Isn't Ogg Vorbis original enough?

    • Re:Oh come on, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:24AM (#7971872)
      >Isn't Ogg Vorbis original enough?

      Yeah. Unfortunately it's also stupid sounding. An informal poll of 3 non-geeks near me agree.

    • Re:Oh come on, (Score:3, Informative)

      by nathanh ( 1214 )
      Isn't Ogg Vorbis original enough?

      Terry Pratchett's originality. They're both names of characters from his Discworld books.

    • Re:Oh come on, (Score:4, Interesting)

      by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) * on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @10:33AM (#7972992) Journal
      It may be original, but it's a horrible product name. Here, I'll make up a name for a product, in the Ogg Vorbis spirit. I'll call it, Arg Nurin. Tell me, would you like to buy Arg Nurin? We've got Arg Nurin on sale, right here!!

      ...

      You have no idea what Arg Nurin is, do you? Same reason most people have no idea what Ogg Vorbis is...the name is entirely devoid of descriptive language. On the other hand, ponder iTunes. What does iTunes do? Hmmm...I bet it's got something to do with music, since it's "Tunes" and all, and since the whole [ie]Word format usually implies either "electronic" or "internet," it's probably got something do with internet music. Bingo, we have a winner. iTunes is a good, descriptive, if unimagininative name.

      My point is, from a branding/product identification perspective, a descriptive name is better than an imaginative name. A descriptive, imaginative name is not necessarily superior, either, as you want a name the general public can decode, so 'imaginative' may work against you.
      • Oh wait, you don't know if you weren't told?
        How about MP3? Remember when it was new?

        Jesus christ, don't you people understand it doesn't matter? Frankly I like "vorbis". Don't call them OGGs, that's like calling DivX "AVIs", which sounds equally retarded.
        • There are certainly exceptions to the "rule." My general point stands. A descriptive product name is better than an imaginative name, and far superior to a cryptic name. "MP3" is a poor name, as you have no idea wtf it does without somebody telling you. Is it a successful "product?" Yes. Is it a good name? Definetly not.
      • Descriptive names are good, I'll give you that.

        But I have to ask. What the hell is the name ipod supposed to mean?

        I can think of very few names that would be worse for this product. Like 'ifelch' or 'ifrump'.
        • I don't know.

          I never made the claim that every name Apple comes up with is good, just that iTunes is a good name. They certainly could have done better in naming the iPod. I think Dell did a better job with their Digital Jukebox name. You have to be pretty dense not to get a good idea of what that does, just based on the name.
      • My point is, from a branding/product identification perspective, a descriptive name is better than an imaginative name.

        Slashdot.
      • For starters, if Ogg Vorbis's fault is being "non-descriptive", let's think of the format that's more used than Ogg, WMA and iTunes's format put together: MP3.

        Exactly in which way is "MP3" descriptive? Well, it isn't. It's just an abbreviation. Didn't stop it from being a success.

        Think of "Zip". Right. It's about as non-descriptive as it gets. It's not called "iCompress" or "eSqueeze" or some other descriptive crap. Neverheless, people now routinely speak of "(un)zipping the files". (You could even argue

  • The answer's in the question. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MythMoth ( 73648 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:52AM (#7971759) Homepage
    Pick a noun. Is it a trade mark ? You bet.

    Pick a verb. Is it a trade mark ? You bet.

    Pick a proper name. Does it sound dumb as a product name ? Yep.

    Repeat as required.

    So yes, all the good ones are chosen. The formula allows you to pick something more or less intelligible without handing your soul and wallet to the rebranding dickheads (Centrica anyone ?).

    It's just getting a little stale that's all... we need a new formula.

    Although now I think about it, maybe Susan isn't such a bad name for a product. Hmm...

  • Ease of understanding (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:53AM (#7971764) Homepage Journal
    Name the application with an easily recognizable and appropriate name that briefly describes what the product does. That's good naming.

    Coming up with obscure references to geeky things is not good naming practice.

    • Re:Ease of understanding (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That only works if you slap a fairly non-descriptive company name in front of the description. Otherwise a group of people could all be discussing "e-mail client" all day, never agreeing on a thing, because they are using different e-mail clients. Personally I think there are lots of good unused words and made-up words to go around.

      Just don't be like the idiots at Mozilla and decide to change from a perfectly useful brand name like "Mozilla" to not one, but two, already used names in rapid succession. The
    • That's absolutely correct.

      Just as NSync is actually just an easily recognizable and appropriate name for their more accurate 'Can't Sing'.

  • Words are arbitrary. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by torpor ( 458 )
    Make some new ones up. It doesn't matter.

    I made up 'ampfea', and among our little group it has come to mean 'any meeting place for electronic artists'... we've had 8 meets since we started getting together for jam sessions, and 'ampfea' has started to take hold as a word in common use among our little crowd.

    This whole iThing is just Madison Avenue counting on the memetic nature of human interaction ... but humans interact in entirely arbitrary ways so ... just make up new words, people. Its easy!
    • Words have meaning; like ampfea, they have purpose and value and associative and connotative meaning.

      Making up words is easy, but not the point. It's the actually conveyance of the idea that's difficult.

      Ampfea is easy to explain: Any meeting place for electronic artists, but *arbitrary* words are not.

      I suspect you use arbitrary when you really mean flexible, adaptive, creative, and fluid. Human interaction isn't arbitrary at all ^^
      • No, I mean arbitrary.

        Making up a word is just like composing a song. It doesn't mean -anything- until someone else has heard it and derived some meaning from it ... you're right.

        The conveyance of the idea behind ampfea wouldn't have happened unless there were a group of people who were willing to agree on the nature of the meaning of that word, and at that point the 'arbitrary' nature ends ... but words, themselves, are completely arbitrary.

        Its up to humans - groups of them, preferrably - to make anythi
        • Good idea, but english didn't evolve like that.

          Here's an example of a perfectly "arbitrary" word that's not arbitrary at all: Snow

          Snow is the word for that white fluffy stuff that falls from the sky. Snow, linguistically, is traced back to indo-european (that weird, abstract language that it was), and is related to Nix (latin) and Niphes (greek). It's also related to lots of other IE language words for the same thing.

          Could you just make up words with no meaning and assign them to any old thing? Sure. Bu
    • Um...wouldn't that be an acronym? While words, those aren't too hard to create.

      In that case, I coin "ateoo" At the Expensive of Others. I think ateoo can make it into the vernacular since it's the way most people act now.

  • Not only that... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sklivvz ( 167003 ) * <`marco.cecconi' `at' `gmail.com'> on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:04AM (#7971813) Homepage Journal
    It has the (supposed) advantage that it increases the brand value: i- meaning intelligent or interactive, e- meaning electronic, m- meaning mobile, x- meaning experience or extended... Of course, since it's so common it's not valuable anymore. It's supposed to sound intelligent but it's just plain dumb!
    Even the free software community lacks imagination in its own way. Think about the recursive naming convention - e.g. GNU==GNU's Not Unix and children - or the Yet Another... paradigm.
    The difference is that OSS names are actually smart and funny, since nobody's doing commercial marketing.
    • Never underestimate the power of stickability -- the catchiness of a particular name to stick in your brain.

      Many moons ago, I took a language implementation course in University. About the only software packages I remember from those days are the tools I used in that course:

      YACC -- Yet Another Compiler Compiler
      LEX -- Lexical Analysis, naturally.

      Short and succinct -- I still think YACC is one of the best all-time product names. Heck, if I can still remember it after mumble-mumble 13 or 14 years, it has
  • Brand names have been unimaginative for as long I can remember. Dogfood names like 'Pal' and 'Chappi' or 'Frolic' - when you think of it, it's awful! But they stick. They are associated with the target audience and therefore need to be geared to them. Geeks love XSomething. It's new, it's funky.

  • It's the current fashion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:16AM (#7971842) Journal
    Tedhnology simply has to appear to move with the times. Having out of date looking names makes the software appear out of date. This is not what marketing people want, so they follow the conventions. The naming schemes change, but the policy is consistent.

    We started off with strings off abbreviations. MS-DOS, VAX, VIC-20. This was probably due to the dominance of IBM, PS/2. Computers were powerful technical devices at the time. They needed a technical sounding name.

    When VisiCalc became popular. We had a whole new era of naming conventions (There was an overlap. It takes a couple of years for the convention to become popular). Hence we have products with names that are simply 2 words strung together. Like WordPerfect. In the mid 80's, and early 90's we had computers that were meant to be friendly, so fairly simple relevent names were in vogue, gradually becoming more whimsical., e.g, you know Word is a word processor, can guess lightwave is a ray tracing package, but it would be hard to guess that Opera is a web browser if you didn't already know. Now computers are "cool" accesories, so products have to have suitably cool names. A quick and easy way to do this is to string an initial and a semi-related noun together. Everyone does this. For marketing people, it must be the thing to do.

  • Some figures (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bazzargh ( 39195 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:27AM (#7971884)
    Owen Densmore covered this in his O'Reilly blog last year [oreillynet.com] - he checked /usr/dict/words against DNS, to see how many words werent taken. There were only 43 4-letter words left from the .com namespace, junk like "frib", and "odso".

    There were a few thousand 5- and 6- letter words left, but again, all pretty uncommon words: "upwaft.com" or "bepity.com" anyone? Most 'real' words are claimed by someone, somewhere, and the only option for making a name that uses words people know is to make one up by sticking words together, or letters and words together.

    -Baz

    • There were only 43 4-letter words left from the .com namespace, junk like "frib", and "odso".

      Looks like there are less than 41 words left by now, since frib.com [gandi.net] and odso.com [gandi.net] have been registered since...

    • I tried a few of those 43 (other than frib and odso) and they were all taken!

      I guess that if you ran that script again, you would find there are no four letter domains available anymore.

      Would be interesting to find out what was the last four letter domain name to be taken.

      I know this is a useless post, but I have Karma to burn!!!

    • If the ICANN namespace were an old-growth forest, its now a barren, clear-cut and strip-mined wasteland.

      Oh well.

  • The real question (Score:4, Funny)

    by mrleemrlee ( 192314 ) <(mrleemrlee1) (at) (comcast.net)> on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:50AM (#7971951) Homepage
    Wonder what J. Lo thinks?

  • Another way to go... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ratface ( 21117 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @08:08AM (#7971995) Homepage Journal
    As the availability of simple, catchy, unique names that are real words is drying up I wonder if in the future we will start to see more of the "entire sentence as product name" category - such as I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

    How about "It's An Even Better Word Processor" or "What A Great Graphics Card" as product names?

    (Of course, some people are already doing this in the form of recursive names - someone already pointed out GNU for instance!)

    • Re:Another way to go... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Karellen ( 104380 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @08:43AM (#7972090) Homepage
      How about the new low-calorie communion wafer "I can't believe it's not Jesus"?
      • a) that's awesome. I almost spit coffee all over my screen.

        b) I'm Catholic, so I believe in transubstantiation. Let's not argue about that, please. Anyway, it should be called "I can't believe it's Jesus!" You know, because, I believe it's Jesus.

        c) I'd imagine a communion wafer is already low calorie. Now, is it low carb? Food companies are making a mint slapping "adkins" on everything they can find that's low carb.
        • c) I'd imagine a communion wafer is already low calorie. Now, is it low carb?

          Er, it's bread. So, no, I don't think it's low carb.

          Then again, according to Catholic doctrine it's supposed to be human flesh ("body of Christ"). Which I suppose would be low carb.

          So I suppose that whether a communion wafer is low carb or not, depends on whether one accepts the doctrine of transubstantiation.

          (Not that I hold any truck with Catholicism or low-carb diets.)

          • OT (Score:2)

            by jensend ( 71114 )
            Remember, the doctrine of transubstantiation depends on the distinction between "substance" and "accident" in Aristotelian/Scholastic philosophy. The accidents are all the properties which inhere in the substance (the Ur-stuff); we would normally expect something which has all the properties of bread to be bread substantially but in literal transubstantiation the accidents of bread are retained while the substance is changed to that of the flesh of Christ. So presumably "carb-ness" is an accident and thus r
        • I'd imagine a communion wafer is already low calorie. Now, is it low carb?

          Actually, more importantly, is it gluten free? [enabling.org]

          Celiac disease [celiac.com] is actually quite common (my mom has it), and it very, very, very undiagnosed in the US. In Ireland I know (from yet another Celiac friend) and in Europe I'm pretty sure that knowledge of Ciliac disease is greater there, and it is more likely to be diagnosed. They actually have entire aisles in grocery stores devoted to gluten-free products, and restaurants puts notes
      • That episode of "The Vicar of Dibley" was on BBC Prime last night! ;-)

    • Maybe Longhorn's final name will be: "I can't believe it's not an operating system" :)
  • We'll go back to simply using the Social Security number.

  • Disyllabic Reduction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @08:55AM (#7972177) Journal
    These days it's apparently all about condensing everything into two syllables. I've been meaning to write about this for awhile now, as it's something which has been eating away at me. People are developing a disgusting (to me, at least) obsession with shortening names, and not just in technology.

    The first I noticed this trend, at least as it swept the masses and thus caught my attention, was Jennifer Lopez. Sheeple were apparently too lazy to make it all the way through five syllables, so they started calling her "J-Lo." It takes one second to say "J-Lo," two at most to say "Jennifer Lopez," I don't understand why an abbreviation is needed. But society must understand, because it's commonplace.

    The trend snowballed from there, and has really taken off in sports, more so than it has in tech or consumer products. Jason Williams is "J-Will," Alex Rodriguez is "A-Rod," etc. It seems like every athlete who's anyone now has his or her own "First Initial - First Syllable of Last Name" abbreviation (the sole exception being Anna Kournikova... I'm the only one who's allowed to call her A-Korn).

    Why don't we call George Bush "G-Bu" or Dick Cheney "D-Chay?" Why isn't Black and Decker "B-Deck?" On the flip side, Why did WorldCom do all those commercials about "Generation D" - oops, pardon me, it was all hip lowercase, "generation d" - instead of just saying "The Digital Generaton?" Why does AT&T have to market their service as "mLife" - there's that hip lowercase letter again - instead of just calling it "Mobile Life?"

    I don't know who decides which names can be cut down, or why. I don't know which parts of society are responsible for dumbing down proper human names - much less product names - or why anyone would continue to encourage such. But I really am getting tired of the disyllabic reduction.

    Yours,

    "Mo-Shit"

  • Have you ever been in a band? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @09:01AM (#7972214) Homepage
    The thing that takes the most time is picking a name that doesn't suck.

    It's much more efficient to just go with the flow. Creativity is better spent on the design of the app.

    This is, of course, why there are so many projects in the "vision" stage on sourceforge and freshmeat. Most people focus on things like a cool name and web site before actually producing something.

    Maybe there's something to choosing a dull name...
  • OneWordJavaNamingConvention

  • I think we should follow food product naming. (Score:5, Funny)

    by eyeball ( 17206 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @09:39AM (#7972506) Journal
    I propose we rename GNU/Linux to "I can't believe it's not Microsoft."

  • when will we just drop the apostrophe altogether? probably because it still has meaning. dLink and eMachine and mLife have implied meaning. that first letter stands for something but contracts the label and makes it stand out from normal sentence fragments you might see in everday situations.

    How about when law firms and accounting firms just string together the senior partner's names? Ernst, Young, Jacoby and Myers anyone? It still has meaning but would you do the same thing with a technology company or a

    • Re:contractions aren't logical either (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How about when law firms and accounting firms just string together the senior partner's names? Ernst, Young, Jacoby and Myers anyone?
      No, but I was always partial to the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe...

      --
      Rate Naked People [fuckmeter.com] at FuckMeter! (Not work-safe [unless your boss is one swingin' jive turkey])
  • Bigger than you think. Poppler, while not yet trademarked, is not a good idea. There's a problem with Popplers, you see, a tasty, delicious, succlent problem.

    And it's guaranteed to bite you in the end if you go that route!

    GTRacer
    - Go MG!

  • You get something cool-sounding/looking with a slightly creative twist to it, next thing you know everything and its mother are copying the formula to cash in on the success. In fact, future naming trends may very well look to pop culture for inspiration. (For real, dogg, this new iPizzle's off the hizzle f'shizzle!)

  • Today's rant brought to you by the letters X,G& (Score:5, Funny)

    by PapaZit ( 33585 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @10:54AM (#7973191)
    Attention free software developers. Yeah, you. And anyone who posts projects to Freshmeat [freshmeat.net]:

    The next person to write an app with a gratuitous G, K, or X at the beginning (gPornViewer, kFlamewriter, XBitTwiddler) wins scorn, derision, and a swift kick in the ass, absolutely free of charge. Moreso if you use a name that's already taken.

  • English word creation... (Score:5, Informative)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis@@@ubasics...com> on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @12:20PM (#7974066) Homepage Journal
    There are english geeks who understand how to create new pleasing word in the english language, but they don't reside among us computer geeks in great numbers. Part of the reason has to do with laziness, and another part is famiarity. This is why companies have both an engineering dept and marketting dept, rather than one group that does it all.

    When engineers are given a spec, they don't have a name for it. Eventually, in order to ease communication, shortcuts are created which bear some resemblance to what the project is or does, or is just a pet name. Mozilla was one such name in the development cycle of netscape early on. If the engineers were in charge of naming, because it was so familiar to them, they would choose the pet name regardless of market perception. By default is not generally the best way to name a product.

    Furthermore, it's hard to come up with a name which is both easy (and obvious) to pronounce, and produces a pleasing effect.

    "Tlorg" is a bad name because you do not start an english word with the TL combination. Battle is a word where TL is used, so it's not a bad combination, it's simply not acceptable at the beginning.

    "Blarg" is easy and fairly obvious to pronounce. But the effect of the word is not something you'd associate with a succesful, useful, and powerful product.

    -Adam

  • For the same reason user interfaces generaly suck, geeks are not artsy. They don't know somehting sounds stupid, because they don't think like the rest of the world.

  • Remember when the iMac came out? And when they came out with five different "flavors"? How about when every single company that made a device encased in plastic, from the Nintendo 64 to the George Foreman Grill, decided that their products should be available in a variety of colors?

    Most successful companies (and some that aren't) know how to copy a successful idea that someone else had, and Apple (at least while under the leadership of Steve Jobs) is a great source of original ideas.

    Fortunately, the f
  • At my company, we wrote a program to create names. It works by combining terms from astronomy and technology.

    Our first choice is Uranus-Hertz.

  • Xaraya (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:04PM (#7979339)

    Maay of you are probably not familiar with Xaraya [xaraya.com], but here's the story of where the name came from.

    "Project X", as we were calling ourselves in the early days, decided to conduct a name contest among the development team. Entries were submitted, and the voting commenced. Not happy with any of the entries, I decided to come up with something new based of 3 criteria:

    • Must start with X. Many of the devs had become collectively fond of this letter for various reasons.
    • Must end in A. I thought the product (a CMS) should be female. Most Latin-derived languages identify female words by ending in A.
    • Must have three syllables. I considered this the optimal length; nice flow, little chance of getting confused with existing words in most languages, and not too long.

    I also felt the name should be a little exotic according to US/European tastes. So, I trolled through a database of Australian place names [ga.gov.au], entering various short combinations of letters. After a while I had a list of seven possibilities... then I started swapping letters (mostly vowels).

    I presented these in IRC, and a couple of them (including Xaraya) caught on. So well, in fact, that the name voting had to be reset to include the new entries. One of our devs who lives in Spain said Xaraya reminded him of the Spanish word for Manta Ray ("raya", literally "blanket"), so I went looking for manta images to create a logo which supported this concept. "Xaraya" won the name contest, and evenually a Manta logo was also adopted.

    Of course, this name has nothing to to with what Xaraya does. Making that connection is the realm of the marketing and branding people.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by UrGeek ( 577204 )
    "Why does it seem as if quite a few applications, along with many a geeky item, follow such unimaginative naming conventions?"

    Beside they are marketed by people with more money than brains or imagination. And often to people with more money than brains or imagination. Sad
  • "With our snazzy new product the iTeam, now there most certainly is an 'i' in your team!"

    or.. "we put the 'i' in team"

    or.. "You got your 'i' in my team. You got your team in my 'i'!" Hey it worked for Reese's

    you get the idea.

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