How 10 Iconic Tech Products Got Their Names 247
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.)"
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.
what about the one that concerns us all... (Score:1, Interesting)
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).
Re:I bet... (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 :)
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.
Third time's a charm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MSFT (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, Blaster was a major PITA and a major worm. There have even been several since then that preyed on the same kind of vulnerabilities (Zotob and sasser spring to mind). Do you remember teardrop? That one even got linux. There were worms decades before XP, and I think it's hard to argue that the worm situation on Windows has gotten WORSE since pre-XP. Each release of windows (including Vista) has gotten better. Better is of course a relative term, but still.
Naming of Panasonic and Epson (Score:3, Interesting)
Panasonic (Originally Matsushita) actually got the name of their company from a review of one of their speaker systems. The article said that they had great "all around sound." All around translates to pana and sound translates to sound.
Epson (Originally Seiko) made a small printer named the EP-101 which was the worlds first compact, lightweight digital printer. My grandfather found large demand in it in the U.S. so they needed to create a new name to use(Seiko is a watch corp in the US). He told them the story about how Panasonic came about the name and left on a flight back stateside.
When he got back, he had a message waiting already and they told him that they were naming it Epson. He told them that is a horrible idea because people would confuse it with epsom salt. They told him it was his fault because it was his idea and explained that they were naming it based on their first product sale like panasonic did. So the name comes from "son of EP" to the more consumer friendly Epson.
Wiki is Hawaiian for "fast" (Score:1, Interesting)
Quoth Wikipedia:
WikiWikiWeb was the first site to be called a wiki. Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the "Wiki Wiki" shuttle bus that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web."