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How 10 Iconic Tech Products Got Their Names
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Nov 11, 2008 01:33 PM
from the slash-dev-slash-random dept.
from the slash-dev-slash-random dept.
lgmac writes "Think Windows Azure is a stupid name? Ever wonder how iPod, BlackBerry and Twitter got their names? Author Tom Wailgum goes inside the process of creating tech product names that are cool but not exclusionary, marketable, and most of all, free of copyright and trademark gotchas. Here's the scoop on ten iconic tech products and how they got their monikers, plus a chat with
the man responsible for naming Azure, BlackBerry, and more. (What's the one he wishes he'd named but didn't? Google.)"
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I bet... (Score:4, Funny)
...it involved a lot of pot.
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Interesting)
I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen him working on projects with my own eyes. I always figured a bunch of marketing hacks just got together in a room and tossed around names until one stuck. Maybe I was just biased because that's the way it worked where I was at.
Parent
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Funny)
and then there is Apple
it's a phone, what should we call it? iPhone
it's a new Mac, what should we call it? iMac
it handles all your tunes, what should we call it? iTunes
great, boys, we're done here
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And since they're apple, the fact that another company (some networking equipment firm no one's ever heard of) had already thought up and marketed an iPhone is no problem whatsoever.
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Funny)
it's a toilet, what should we call it? iShit
it's an intravenous drug, what should we call it? iNject.
it's an Apple fan boy, what should we call it? iDiot.
(just a little joke, Macaniacs..)
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Re:I bet... (Score:5, Funny)
"it's a toilet, what should we call it? iShit"
In the Health care industy, a shit is callws a 'BM' (stands for bowel movement)
So an Apple toilet would be called... oh wait, you think big blues lawyers would have an iSue with that?
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Re:I bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Naming is actually a really big business and is usually a pretty painful process. I know someone that was a professional namer that worked for a big branding house for a while. The time they spent coming up with names was pretty incredible.
F/OSS, in general, fails miserably here. "Linpus Lite" on the EEE PCs? WTF?
The name should not matter, but in reality, it does. Unfortunately, OSS projects seem to only accept a rebranding under threats of legal action.
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Re:I bet... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey if there was a patchy helicopter with me in its cross hairs I would be running pretty fast - not that running would do me much good. :P
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
same goes for logos. I remember a friend of mine saying that he got to see the Nike sketchbook, he said the original brainstorm of "possible" logos was as thick as a bible (if the bible was printed on regular paper, not the thin paper).
in the end, all the work for a swoosh :)
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Funny)
Mitch Hedberg had a bit on one of his comedy CDs about product naming. Paraphrasing: take whatever the product does and add "er."
"What's this thing do?"
"It keeps things fresh."
"Then that's a fresher. I'm goin' on break."
Parent
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Informative)
product / company type
target audience
what sort of feeling the name should convey
the regions that the name will be used in
Namers then go off on their own and compose massive lists of names. I've seen the names run the gamut from simple mashups of common words to mashups of greek / latin roots to words based on etymological research of the original target "feeling" words. Then the namers get together and reduce the list down to a set of finalists before presenting them for client review.
Sometimes it takes a few iterations... Particularly if the objective is to get a globally trademarkable word that won't be misinterpreted as meaning anything offensive in another country.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hey maygn! Why you buy a car that no go?
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Funny)
So, what kind of names do their children have? Did they spend months obsessively trying to determine a name that conveys "don't beat me up, now, please hire me later"?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on how set on a name their wife is, it could be over in a matter of seconds.
Re:I bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'd add that some places actively test the names, as well. E.g., asking what people think in focus groups of different names. Or, more subtly, showing a new product to different people with different names on it, and getting stats about their reactions.
Depending too much on what executives personally think of names is dangerous, because executives are very rarely representative of the target market. That lesson applies to lots of other things, too, like features and pricing.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
iPot?
How about the "iForOneWelcomeOur...".
On second thought - nah...
His explanation of Google's name is BS (Score:5, Insightful)
He says before Google, all the search engines were engineering names like WebCrawler, Webfinder, Websearcher, etc.
Apparently he never heard of search engines like AltaVista, Yahoo!, Lycos, etc. Seriously? Names are his business and he doesn't remember any of those?
Re:His explanation of Google's name is BS (Score:4, Funny)
man those last ones you said are really from the past, im having trouble remembering them too. when was the last time you heard of yahoo?
Parent
Quick, someone mail this article... (Score:5, Funny)
... to the GIMP devs.
Gimp (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, what you said is funny, but seriously now I had to pitch using a free image suite to a customer who was kinda penny-pinching, and when I suggested that we "bring out the GIMP" the customer started laughing at me, and they became somewhat violent. I ducked the coffee she threw at me, but only after I explained (while dodging numerous other desk utensils) that GIMP stood for "GNU Image Manipulation Program" did the abuse dwindle.
And then she said, "What the hell does a GNU have to do with anything? You people are all fucking crazy!! ARRRRRGHHHHH!!!!" And she had a coronary and passed out from too much bacon and eggs... cholesterol rich, fatty foods, apparently add up over the years.
Why couldn't they call it something like "Expensive Looking Free Graphics Suite" so like people could present it and be cheered for mentioning the product? The customer might have invited me to join her for a cup of coffee instead of hurl the damn thing at me. Although that tends to be reduced to "ELFGS" which sounds equally as annoying.
Let's have a name-fork of the project! I vote for the name "Rez". That way, I could say, "MRS. Customer, we have just what you need in the Rez project, a free graphics utility. I'm not sure what this GIMP project is you keep balking at, but the last guy who brought up that project is a fool. Go with our project instead and we'll use Rez. It sounds cooler."
Of course I'm joking around a little but apart from my exaggeration, this was the level of irritation expressed by said customer in regards to the GIMP moniker.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In general giving Open Source Apps horrible names, and odd Icons to go with it hurts the adoption of open source more then most anything else. First there is no real point except to feed RMS's ego to put G for GNU in its name. If you care what license it is then you read the license (at least the title), otherwise you will download and use it anyways. Next the name and/or the icon should help the person know what the app does. Next the name shouldn't sound like a 3rd party ripoff of a well known brand. N
Depends on where you've been (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
At least if you say twitter and google to a girl and they won't take it the wrong way.
awk, biff, grep, sed, emacs, du, chmod:
I definitely see a drink thrown in my face and a slap in the future. Even from imaginary ones.
No Copyright For Names (Score:4, Informative)
> ...free of copyright ... gotchas.
A name cannot have any "copyright gotchas" . Names cannot be protected by copyright.
Azure? (Score:3, Funny)
I figured that they were tired of hearing about the BSOD, and "Azure screen of death" would at least sound nicer.
Second? Try third. (Score:4, Informative)
Debian was ok with Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
> Then it became Firefox, and Debian didn't like that and called it IceWeasel.
Debian had no objection whatever to calling it Firefox. Mozilla objected to Debian doing so.
Parent
Re:Second? Try third. (Score:5, Informative)
No, Debian was forced to rename it due to their stance on trademarks.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3634591 [internetnews.com]
Parent
Re:Second? Try third. (Score:5, Insightful)
The second iteration was actually probably the better, branding-wise.
They were all set -- Firebird for web, Thunderbird for email, Sunbird for calendar -- even things like Songbird for music. I think there were even logos.
Parent
German naming process... (Score:5, Funny)
A couple decades back there was a German man with his own branding/naming company. A Japanese company, not satisfied with their experience for English speaking markets, called him up and asked him to help out with a new car. Naturally, he inquired as to the project timeline, due dates etc.
Nervously, the Japanese marketer replied that they needed something for the following Monday.
After a few moments pause, the German replied "Dat Soon? eh?"
Later that same year he took a trip to London on business. While eating at a local steakhouse, he asked "what's dis here sauce?"
Re:German naming process... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:German naming process... (Score:5, Informative)
Pun fail.
It's pronounced like ""wuster"".
Parent
TEN pages?! (Score:3, Insightful)
A pretty poorly researched article (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if we can just (Score:3, Funny)
get online news websites to understand how the scrollbars work in a web browser, instead of breaking one 'page' into a dozen small ones that, instead of the whole article loading at once, and then being able to scroll smoothly, instead of having to click next, next, next, and have frustrating pauses while trying to read.
After I read the first 'bit' and realized Id have to click, wait, click, wait to read the rest, I just closed the tab instead of bothering.
Occasionally on sites like that there is a 'printable version' that gives the whole article as one, but lately it seems to just give a 'printable version' of that one bit of the story. /. editors - lets not encourage these sites by linking to them and giving them the ad traffic.
Third time's a charm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MSFT (Score:5, Funny)
"If you want to keep us secure, take a page from Linux and open up your OS to public scrutiny so that people can perfect it. What are you afraid of?"
You must be new here
>mfh (56)
or not
Parent
Re:MSFT (Score:4, Interesting)
Name it what you want, but the RESULT is what gives products their reputations, not the names of said products. The only saving grace of XP is how terrible Vista was received by the public, so in comparison, XP looked much better. And how interesting this is to me because I remember how terrible XP was in the beginning.
I think that's BS. Other than a small subset of people who were upset about activation, XP was pretty good from the get go. SP1 made it good without reservations. (and I don't mean this is a big linux vs Windows vs Mac flamefest) Most people switching to XP had been using 95/98/ME. XP--without reservation--is better than all of them. If you were coming from 2K, it was less of a jump, but still an improvement for most users (imho, I know some people debate this last point).
Parent
Re:MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. And think about it... Micro-soft itself is a pretty ho-hum name, in fact it's downright lame. Today, if the company name would be still available, no one in their right mind would give their software firm a name like that, even freelancing consultants wouldn't be so silly as to pick that as their firm's name. But they rose to greatness (in influence and dollars if not reputation for quality), and thus the name lost its lameness and became associated with an extremely succesful tech company.
Parent
Microsoft "Innovates" a lot (Score:4, Funny)
Who cares if we find out that you people at Microsoft haven't done any real work since 1990... we ALREADY KNOW THAT.
Nah, their consumer OSes have seen the addition of memory protection. Beore then, Microsoft did some real doesn't-work.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Remind me how it's divested entirely from the Microsoft shares he holds?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Remind me how it's divested entirely from the Microsoft shares he holds?
Even if Microsoft stock collapsed to a relatively unthinkable low, Ballmer probably would end up with stock worth north of $100M.
Remember that Microsoft has billions of cash in the bank, a large amount of real property, and no debt. So, unlike many other companies, their stock has a absolute bottom value (it could go lower, but then it would be pushed right back up as people bought it).
Re:what about the one that concerns us all... (Score:5, Funny)
RTFFAQ.
http://slashdot.org/faq/slashmeta.shtml#sm150 [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
I believe it's based on the official major releases of Windows NT, since the 9x kernel was abandoned.
1. Windows NT 3.1
2. Windows NT 3.5
3. Windows NT 4.0
4. Windows 2000
5. Windows XP
6. Windows Vista
7. Windows 7
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm still trying to find funding for my Tamper Indicative Toggle Switch. I even offered to change the name to Authenticated Smart Switch. For some reason, my boss objected to both names.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You should stop try to find funding, and just do it. Like liboobs [gnome.org].
Re:the new way: (Score:5, Funny)
Hint: it'll probably be spelt strangely.
What do you know? http://www.speltstrangely.com/ [speltstrangely.com] is available!
Finally a name for my OSS speech recognition project!
Parent
Re:the new way: (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, by all means someone should start selling a Skami Computer, hopefully via infomercial! I'd recommend filling out the product line with a "Do!Be!Us!" smartphone, a "Krapee" monitor line, the "De-Funk(t)" music player, the "Borkt" series of printers, and the "InnerFierce" wireless networking gear.
But please, if you do this, make sure you set up your "world headquarters" in a semi-abandoned strip mall, and move it every time the landlord kicks you out for non-payment. (And no, you can't ever pay rent when running a scam. A penny stolen is a penny earned.)
The good news is you'll be able to sell Vista on this stuff without increasing your complaint load. Heck, given the target audience, you could probably charge them for two copies and call it Double Vista.
Parent