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I think that the naming of companies and products is less important than people think, especially the marketing people. Think of some well known companies today

I think that the naming of companies and products is less important than people think, especially the marketing people. Think of some well known companies today like Google, Twitter or IBM. Google is a made up word that derives from Googol, but how many people would have heard of Googol. Twitter has always seemed a dumbass name to me, although this is down to my personal subjective opinion. IBM has no meaning because it is an acronym and most people will not know what the letters stand for. If the product is good the name will stick no matter what. The writer spent a lot of time working on the name but we will never know if the OS would have been just as successful with a different name. I suspect the name had nothing to do with it.

pygy_ 11y ago
> The writer spent a lot of time working on the name but we will never know if the OS would have been just as successful with a different name. It was not about just making the OS popular, it was about forcing the press to refer to the MicroSoft brand every time one of their product was mentioned. Likewise for Word.
- mikeyanderson 11y ago
  That seems like such a brilliant move in retrospect. The crazy thing is that they got really simple and iconic brand names because of it.
jlarocco 11y ago
I think you're wrong about IBM. Just about everybody knows it stands for "International Business Machines," and if I'm not mistaken it went by that name for a long time before it became popular enough to go by the acronym. Naming is more important than you think. No doubt a great name won't fix a bad product, and a bad name won't hurt a great product too much, but outside those extremes, I think it helps to have a catchy, unique sounding name, that isn't too ridiculous sounding. If I feel silly or stupid saying a product's name (or an open source project's name), I'm not likely to recommend it unless it's just over the top awesome, which most things aren't.
- mytochar 11y ago
  > Just about everybody knows it stands for "International Business Machines," I didn't. I imagine my mom probably didn't, though she would say "that makes sense". My uncle most likely doesn't. I imagine my tech friends don't know, either.

pygy_ 11y ago

> The writer spent a lot of time working on the name but we will never know if the OS would have been just as successful with a different name. It was not about just making the OS popular, it was about forcing the press to refer to the MicroSoft brand every time one of their product was mentioned. Likewise for Word.

mikeyanderson 11y ago
That seems like such a brilliant move in retrospect. The crazy thing is that they got really simple and iconic brand names because of it.

jlarocco 11y ago

I think you're wrong about IBM. Just about everybody knows it stands for "International Business Machines," and if I'm not mistaken it went by that name for a long time before it became popular enough to go by the acronym. Naming is more important than you think. No doubt a great name won't fix a bad product, and a bad name won't hurt a great product too much, but outside those extremes, I think it helps to have a catchy, unique sounding name, that isn't too ridiculous sounding. If I feel silly or stupid saying a product's name (or an open source project's name), I'm not likely to recommend it unless it's just over the top awesome, which most things aren't.

mytochar 11y ago
> Just about everybody knows it stands for "International Business Machines," I didn't. I imagine my mom probably didn't, though she would say "that makes sense". My uncle most likely doesn't. I imagine my tech friends don't know, either.