Why Such Unimaginative Nomenclature? 153
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?"
..uhm (Score:5, Funny)
OP: The answer ... (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:OP: The answer ... (Score:1)
Re:OP: The answer ... (Score:2)
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)
ROFL.... (Score:2)
When I was in college, I joked about starting up a band with some friends, and calling ourselves [b]iDunno[/b].
Oh come on, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh come on, (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Unfortunately it's also stupid sounding. An informal poll of 3 non-geeks near me agree.
Re:Oh come on, (Score:3, Informative)
Terry Pratchett's originality. They're both names of characters from his Discworld books.
Re:Oh come on, (Score:2)
Re:Oh come on, (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Then explain what FLAC is. (Score:2)
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.
Re:Then explain what FLAC is. (Score:2)
Re:Oh come on, (Score:2)
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'.
Re:Oh come on, (Score:2)
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.
One word.. (Score:1)
Re:Oh come on, (Score:2)
Slashdot.
I'll have to disaggree (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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...
Re:The answer's in the question. (Score:5, Funny)
like
geek1: "Have you used Susan too?"
geek2: "Yeah, i am so sattisfied with the result.."
geek3: "Susan sucked!"
good option!
Re:The answer's in the question. (Score:1)
when susan went down, all hell broke loose
Re:The answer's in the question. (Score:2)
Re:The answer's in the question. (Score:2)
"Paul is hung!"
"Why?"
"Well, Paul mounted Mary, but then when Mary went down, Paul stopped responding."
"Must have been a hard mount."
Re:The answer's in the question. (Score:2)
There are limits to trademarks (Score:2)
Intel chose Pentium instead of 586 because numbers are not trademarkable. I think the same applies to plain words, thus Office is not the trademark, Windows Office.
If this is correct (and remember, IANATmL), then your examples are bogus, and the reason for bizarre names is to get something trademarkable. Would you rather xyzzy and plugh?
Re:There are limits to trademarks (Score:1)
Sorry to nitpick, but I believe it's "Microsoft Office".
Re:The answer's in the question. (Score:2)
Pick a verb. Is it a trade mark ? You bet.
Not a winning bet.
Even if the USPTO approves a trademark registration for a simple noun or verb, it wouldn't stand up well in court. For an enforceable trademark you need to combine it with some other word to form a distinctive phrase (such as Apple Mortgage, Apple Attache, Apple Books, Apple Signs, Apple Records, or Apple Computer) or use it in combination with an original logo or design (e.g. the word "Apple" with t
Ease of understanding (Score:4, Insightful)
Coming up with obscure references to geeky things is not good naming practice.
Re:Ease of understanding (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Ease of understanding (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:Words are NOT arbitrary. (Score:2)
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 ^^
Re:Words are NOT arbitrary. (Score:1)
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
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
Its up to humans - groups of them, preferrably - to make anythi
Re:Words are NOT arbitrary. (Score:2)
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
Re:Words are NOT arbitrary. (Score:2)
Re:Words are NOT arbitrary. (Score:2)
that, and not realizing it had no article. =P
Re:Words are NOT arbitrary. (Score:2)
Whoever first picked them (the culture) might have originally picked those patterns based on many different things they saw in their environment or heard around them. It isn't simply arbitrary that "plop" and "tweet" and "crash" sound so much like the things they try to represent(ONOMATOPOEIA). It wasn't a random or arbitrary process.
Acronym? (Score:1)
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.
Re:Words are arbitrary. (Score:1)
Not only that... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not only that... (Score:2)
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
Re:Not only that... (Score:2)
It's allways been like this (Score:1)
It's the current fashion (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's the current fashion (Score:2)
*smirks geekfully*
Re:It's the current fashion (Score:1)
Re:It's the current fashion (Score:1)
Apple DOS
Atari DOS
IBM PC DOS (as opposed to IBM Mainframe DOS)
Compaq DOS
There wasn't really a product called "MS-DOS" until many years later (DOS 4?). It was an internal name or techie jargon before then, much like "MacOS" was before a certain point.
Now, "CP/M" -- that sounded super technical.
Re:It's the current fashion (Score:2)
Yeah, but so did PL/1.
Some figures (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Some figures (Score:1)
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...
Re:Some figures (Score:2)
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!!!
Re:Some figures (Score:2)
Oh well.
The real question (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Jello? Think? You're talking about a quivering blob, not about a sentient being ...
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Another way to go... (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:Another way to go... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Another way to go... (Score:1)
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)
Re:Another way to go... (Score:2)
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
Vicar of Dibley (Score:2)
Re:Another way to go... (Score:2)
tH3 s01ut10n: (Score:1)
Disyllabic Reduction (Score:4, Interesting)
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"
Speaking of which.. (Score:2, Troll)
Terrence Baggart (T-Bag)
Alan Holden (A-Hole)
Vance Ginsburg (Va-G...ahh, fuck it)
In all seriousness, it's interesting how the trend towards vocal laziness causes all sorts of new implications...
Re:Speaking of which.. (Score:2)
Alan Holden (A-Hole)
I think Robert Sole was the name you were looking for.
Re:Speaking of which.. (Score:2)
Old SNL skit (Score:2)
Then the doorbell rings and delivery guy (Rob Schneider) asks for "Asswipe [lastname]." The husband tells him the correct pronunciation is "oz-WEE-pay"
Pause here for a few seconds to simulate me Goog
Re:Disyllabic Reduction (Score:2)
I personally call him "G-Dub". As in "G Dubya".
We call them "Cheney" and "Dubya" (Score:2)
Re:Disyllabic Reduction (Score:2)
I have a sudden mental image of Dick Cheney, in the appropriate gear, at a DJ station, doing the DJ thing, while Bush is shouting into a microphone, whilst waving his arm in the air and what not, 'DJ D-Chay is in the HIZZOUSE! This is muthafuckin Dubya coming atcha! Everybody say HEY!' and so on.
Kind of disturbing, really.
I've heard it said that in the case of Ms. Lopez, 'J-Lo' is the singer, and 'Jennifer Lopez' is the acctress; two separa
The other J.Lo gives the weather (Score:2)
And Jennifer Lopez is a meteorologist [weather.com].
Earlier than J-Lo... (Score:2)
Think McDonald's - or, MickyD's. Not two syllables, but still a radical shortening of the name...
Re:About Acorns (Score:2)
Have you ever been in a band? (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Java!! (Score:1)
I think we should follow food product naming. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think we should follow food product naming. (Score:3, Funny)
"I can't believe it's not Unix"
Believing that it isn't Microsoft is pretty easy, actually.
contractions aren't logical either (Score:2)
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)
--
Rate Naked People [fuckmeter.com] at FuckMeter! (Not work-safe [unless your boss is one swingin' jive turkey])
I'm still waiting for the product called (Score:2, Funny)
eDiot.
Re:I'm still waiting for the product called (Score:2)
Well, You See, The Problem Is... (Score:2)
And it's guaranteed to bite you in the end if you go that route!
GTRacer
- Go MG!
It's like pop culture (Score:1)
Today's rant brought to you by the letters X,G& (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Today's rant brought to you by the letters X,G& (Score:1, Funny)
Well, I am off to upload iPornViewer, jFlamewriter, and BitTwiddler.Net. Wish me luck!
English word creation... (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:English word creation... (Score:2)
-Adam
Re:English word creation... (Score:2)
Infripit
One of our programmers modifed some code and left a comment like:
We aren't sure if that is good or bad, but we sure like the word. Its one of my Magnetic Word Poetry words now
Re:English word creation... (Score:2)
Geeks, are the problem (Score:1)
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.
iAppleripoff, now in five flavors (Score:1)
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
I suppose you would prefer ... (Score:2)
At my company (Score:2)
Our first choice is Uranus-Hertz.
Re:At my company (Score:2)
Xaraya (Score:3, Informative)
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:
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.
Re:Xaraya (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
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
old adage no longer true (Score:2)
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.