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Sorry to be Debbie Downer, and a little bit off topic: when will the trend of dropping vowels from names end? Googling for "Receivd" autocorrects, and I doubt t

Sorry to be Debbie Downer, and a little bit off topic: when will the trend of dropping vowels from names end? Googling for "Receivd" autocorrects, and I doubt they're going to be expedient in fixing that. Domain names are now responsible for devolving English... I need someone to hate for this. Was Flickr first?

crikli 16y ago
I've been involved with several projects that did this. The motivation wasn't to sound hip and cool, but rather to find a domain name that some squatting piece of trash wasn't asking eleventy million dollars for.
- akkartik 16y ago
  There's no shortage of good domains that the squatters haven't gotten to. Just use combinations of two words, something obvious and easy to spell from sound. I've purchased 2 domains in the past 3 years: hackerstream and readwarp[1]. Perhaps you think they both have something wrong with them. But I contend that they're both better than del.icio.us or receivd. (Too bad that isn't all there is to a project.) [1] In general I've been pleasantly surprised at how much of the namespace is still available. Both times I thought up a name in the shower after a few weeks of building it, and was pleasantly surprised to find my first attempt was available. Take it, done, and "find a domain name" was never even on my todo list.
  - joelg87 16y ago
    I recently launched a startup which I named bfffr, playing on the word "buffer" since it ties closely to what the product does. I also chose that name because dribbble and forrst seem to be doing pretty well even with odd names like that. Admittedly I would have liked two f's, but the domain was taken. I paid close attention to how people were responding to the name. Many didn't even know how to pronounce "bfffr". I shortly changed the name to "Buffer", with the domain name bufferapp.com. It has turned out to be a very good decision. Domains may be hard to get, but there are plenty of examples out there that show we don't have to deny ourselves a good name simply because the domain name is gone (just look at all the 37signals products).
    - unwind 16y ago
      "Many didn't even know how to pronounce 'bfffr'". What's with the even? Do you honestly think that is surprising?
      - joelg87 16y ago
        I honestly was quite surprised, but now I look back on it I realise how obviously hard to pronounce that very odd word is. It is very embarrassing to think I started with that name, but I'm glad I was receptive enough to change it and I thought it was worth sharing, as I believe many others may have similar assumptions with naming their startups. I guess that is another lesson that we always need to question our assumptions.
- nischalshetty 16y ago
  Domain squatters are to be blamed foremost for this. There are so many beautiful domain names with stupid ads on them as the landing page. Domain names should cost like at least a 100 bucks, wait, would even that stop them!?
brendanlim 16y ago
Haha! I actually did notice it on Flickr first as well. If we could afford the received.com domain we would have gotten it :)
dstein 16y ago
I fear that in the future these mispellings will wind up being recognized as correct spelling of the words.
- light3 16y ago
  Recognizd!
- aditya 16y ago
  That's what Mark Twain (purportedly) said: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm
  - statictype 16y ago
    "Every quote, given enough time, will be attributed to Mark Twain" - Mark Twain
  - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
    Or Mrk Twn as he would be called today.
- nollidge 16y ago
  Don't you mean "recognised"?
Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
Are they not also easier to trademark? You're likely to be the only person using them and made up words don't tend to have any prior usage or meaning assigned (thus avoiding the sort of battle Apple is going through with "App Store" right now).
nollidge 16y ago
> Domain names are now responsible for devolving English [Citation needed] on three counts: 1. What does language "devolution" even mean? 2. Is English actually "devolving"? 3. Are domain naming trends in any way related to that?
- jedsmith 16y ago
  The sarcasm wasn't evident? I thought the ellipsis and last two sentences put it away that I was tongue-in-cheek frustrated. As for point 2: yes, English is certainly devolving. I graded papers in college -- "u" and "lol" and "tho" being present in an academic paper is a worrying trend. The writing ability of the average college-aged person that I observed personally worried me about the future of prose, and educationally we're not doing anything about it (the guilty parties also don't care). Admittedly, my sample size is small, but I can't imagine this isn't the case elsewhere. It isn't limited to English, either. My U.S. History class in high school did a hell of a job teaching me about the plight of Asian-American immigrants at Ellis Island in the 20th century (that was our first lesson), but completely skipped the 18th and 19th centuries. The new American education.
  - jsnell 16y ago
    Why should the archaic "you" or "though" with all those useless vestigial letters be considered somehow more evolved than the variants that correspond more closely to the spoken language? Likewise what's wrong with "lol"? You obviously understood what they meant, and conveying that information is exactly the purpose of language. Languages have always changed, and grumpy old men have always complained about how those changes are destroying the language. But despite that perpetual cycle of corruption lasting for thousands of years, we are in fact not communicating by pointing and grunting.
    - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
      We are in fact in many cases not communicating at all. Witness the wild misinterpretations on Hacker News, we've all experienced it. Witness the fracturing of language by region, city or neighborhood. Witness my inability to comprehend vacuous television dialog dominated by 20-somethings. - Grumpy Old Man

crikli 16y ago

I've been involved with several projects that did this. The motivation wasn't to sound hip and cool, but rather to find a domain name that some squatting piece of trash wasn't asking eleventy million dollars for.

akkartik 16y ago
There's no shortage of good domains that the squatters haven't gotten to. Just use combinations of two words, something obvious and easy to spell from sound. I've purchased 2 domains in the past 3 years: hackerstream and readwarp[1]. Perhaps you think they both have something wrong with them. But I contend that they're both better than del.icio.us or receivd. (Too bad that isn't all there is to a project.) [1] In general I've been pleasantly surprised at how much of the namespace is still available. Both times I thought up a name in the shower after a few weeks of building it, and was pleasantly surprised to find my first attempt was available. Take it, done, and "find a domain name" was never even on my todo list.
- joelg87 16y ago
  I recently launched a startup which I named bfffr, playing on the word "buffer" since it ties closely to what the product does. I also chose that name because dribbble and forrst seem to be doing pretty well even with odd names like that. Admittedly I would have liked two f's, but the domain was taken. I paid close attention to how people were responding to the name. Many didn't even know how to pronounce "bfffr". I shortly changed the name to "Buffer", with the domain name bufferapp.com. It has turned out to be a very good decision. Domains may be hard to get, but there are plenty of examples out there that show we don't have to deny ourselves a good name simply because the domain name is gone (just look at all the 37signals products).
  - unwind 16y ago
    "Many didn't even know how to pronounce 'bfffr'". What's with the even? Do you honestly think that is surprising?
    - joelg87 16y ago
      I honestly was quite surprised, but now I look back on it I realise how obviously hard to pronounce that very odd word is. It is very embarrassing to think I started with that name, but I'm glad I was receptive enough to change it and I thought it was worth sharing, as I believe many others may have similar assumptions with naming their startups. I guess that is another lesson that we always need to question our assumptions.
nischalshetty 16y ago
Domain squatters are to be blamed foremost for this. There are so many beautiful domain names with stupid ads on them as the landing page. Domain names should cost like at least a 100 bucks, wait, would even that stop them!?

brendanlim 16y ago

Haha! I actually did notice it on Flickr first as well. If we could afford the received.com domain we would have gotten it :)

dstein 16y ago

I fear that in the future these mispellings will wind up being recognized as correct spelling of the words.

light3 16y ago
Recognizd!
aditya 16y ago
That's what Mark Twain (purportedly) said: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm
- statictype 16y ago
  "Every quote, given enough time, will be attributed to Mark Twain" - Mark Twain
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  Or Mrk Twn as he would be called today.
nollidge 16y ago
Don't you mean "recognised"?

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago

Are they not also easier to trademark? You're likely to be the only person using them and made up words don't tend to have any prior usage or meaning assigned (thus avoiding the sort of battle Apple is going through with "App Store" right now).

nollidge 16y ago

> Domain names are now responsible for devolving English [Citation needed] on three counts: 1. What does language "devolution" even mean? 2. Is English actually "devolving"? 3. Are domain naming trends in any way related to that?

jedsmith 16y ago
The sarcasm wasn't evident? I thought the ellipsis and last two sentences put it away that I was tongue-in-cheek frustrated. As for point 2: yes, English is certainly devolving. I graded papers in college -- "u" and "lol" and "tho" being present in an academic paper is a worrying trend. The writing ability of the average college-aged person that I observed personally worried me about the future of prose, and educationally we're not doing anything about it (the guilty parties also don't care). Admittedly, my sample size is small, but I can't imagine this isn't the case elsewhere. It isn't limited to English, either. My U.S. History class in high school did a hell of a job teaching me about the plight of Asian-American immigrants at Ellis Island in the 20th century (that was our first lesson), but completely skipped the 18th and 19th centuries. The new American education.
- jsnell 16y ago
  Why should the archaic "you" or "though" with all those useless vestigial letters be considered somehow more evolved than the variants that correspond more closely to the spoken language? Likewise what's wrong with "lol"? You obviously understood what they meant, and conveying that information is exactly the purpose of language. Languages have always changed, and grumpy old men have always complained about how those changes are destroying the language. But despite that perpetual cycle of corruption lasting for thousands of years, we are in fact not communicating by pointing and grunting.
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    We are in fact in many cases not communicating at all. Witness the wild misinterpretations on Hacker News, we've all experienced it. Witness the fracturing of language by region, city or neighborhood. Witness my inability to comprehend vacuous television dialog dominated by 20-somethings. - Grumpy Old Man