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It's hard to recall how many (probably hundreds) of projects (from humble command line utilities to social movements) I have imagined but never started and ulti

It's hard to recall how many (probably hundreds) of projects (from humble command line utilities to social movements) I have imagined but never started and ultimately forgotten just because I couldn't come up with how to name the file/folder for them. Perhaps some could change my life or the world but now they're lost to oblivion. Guess what's I am doing right now? Googling for a good generator of cool-looking gibberish words which would provide a steady source of meaningless names for my projects. I would rather use UUIDs if they were not so hard to read and memorize. I also love my project names to sound ironical so nobody would take them too serious, expect much and judge too hard. E.g. I actually find "git", "shit"[1], and "gimp" perfect names (whoever doesn't know - try find out what do "git" and "gimp" words mean besides the respective software products). Anything can be renamed (or left as it is) once you grow in confidence the actual project can probably succeed. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22303710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22303710

waterhouse 6y ago
In my earlier years, I tended to use swearwords, exclamations, etc ("meh" and "nub" are still gotos) to name functions that I wasn't exactly sure what I would do with. If they were worth keeping beyond a short programming session (which was usually not the case), then I gave them a real name later.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
Try this: curl -s -X POST "https://api.gfycat.com/v1/gfycats" -H "Content-Type: application/json" | jq .gfyname -r I call it "gfyname" and stick it in ~/bin. Then you can do `while true; do gfyname; done` AchingVengefulDungenesscrab AgitatedLastingBorzoi FairImmaculateGelding WeightyInsistentJellyfish UnevenHopefulDungbeetle UntidyWelloffBellfrog PracticalDismalCat UnkemptWebbedGreendarnerdragonfly FaintHauntingFairybluebird RichPerkyDogfish MelodicRecentBarracuda GenerousBronzeBarasinga QueasyFewHarlequinbug UnrulyFaintApisdorsatalaboriosa Melodic Barracuda isn't terrible. Weighty. Dismal Cat. And so on. Looks like it sometimes returns `null` now, which is a shame. It used to be rock solid. It's nice for generating names for your temp files.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  Thanks. The names themselves are a little too long but seem a good source of what to start with. E.g. I would take UntidyWelloffBellfrog and remove parts of it to get Udyber or Tyllog. Somewhat sad fact: neither of these semi-random letter combinations actually is not an existing word - googling them yields quite a long list of occurrences. And there even is a GitHub user named Bellfrog already.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > neither of these semi-random letter combinations actually is not an existing word I think that's the point of that UID scheme, though - to make them easier to remember than the usual ?v=a1Vp87d_x or whatnot. But then, two-word names could work as codenames for project. Untidy Bellfrog sounds nice.
    - qwerty456127 6y ago
      No, what I mean is not about this. I just mean it's so hard to find totally non-existent, let alone real unused words that even seemingly-random letter combinations turn out to be known words in some languages. For example I've used UntidyWelloffBellfrog just as a "seed" to remove random parts and get Udyber and Tyllog look more concise to me and which I would expect to be non-existent words. Yet it turns out these words exist and can be found all over the Internet.
todd8 6y ago
Five of us were investigating starting a company together. After a few meetings, the issue of a name came up and we arranged for a face-to-face meeting to brainstorm. I didn’t want a name like, System Administration Software Inc because what would we do if we ended up writing software for garage door openers. I suggested picking a catchy name that wouldn’t identify what we made too narrowly. Among the names I proposed that I still remember over 30 years later were Apache and Emerald City Software; someone else proposed Veritas. None of these were unanimously liked by the group. I then recalled a unique hostname used by a friend and suggested Tivoli, everyone liked it and the name is still used today. There was one wrinkle, when I went to the state’s Attorney General’s office to register the name for incorporation, I discovered that there was already a Tivoli Inc in Texas. (I didn’t realize that there was a small town in Texas by the name Tivoli.) So I tacked on another word and the company’s new name became Tivoli Systems. Out of the original group, only two of us actually started the company. We quit our jobs and went all in.
- mjh2539 6y ago
  There was a Tivoli that was acquired by IBM. Was that you guys or the other company?

waterhouse 6y ago

In my earlier years, I tended to use swearwords, exclamations, etc ("meh" and "nub" are still gotos) to name functions that I wasn't exactly sure what I would do with. If they were worth keeping beyond a short programming session (which was usually not the case), then I gave them a real name later.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

Try this: curl -s -X POST "https://api.gfycat.com/v1/gfycats" -H "Content-Type: application/json" | jq .gfyname -r I call it "gfyname" and stick it in ~/bin. Then you can do `while true; do gfyname; done` AchingVengefulDungenesscrab AgitatedLastingBorzoi FairImmaculateGelding WeightyInsistentJellyfish UnevenHopefulDungbeetle UntidyWelloffBellfrog PracticalDismalCat UnkemptWebbedGreendarnerdragonfly FaintHauntingFairybluebird RichPerkyDogfish MelodicRecentBarracuda GenerousBronzeBarasinga QueasyFewHarlequinbug UnrulyFaintApisdorsatalaboriosa Melodic Barracuda isn't terrible. Weighty. Dismal Cat. And so on. Looks like it sometimes returns `null` now, which is a shame. It used to be rock solid. It's nice for generating names for your temp files.

qwerty456127 6y ago
Thanks. The names themselves are a little too long but seem a good source of what to start with. E.g. I would take UntidyWelloffBellfrog and remove parts of it to get Udyber or Tyllog. Somewhat sad fact: neither of these semi-random letter combinations actually is not an existing word - googling them yields quite a long list of occurrences. And there even is a GitHub user named Bellfrog already.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > neither of these semi-random letter combinations actually is not an existing word I think that's the point of that UID scheme, though - to make them easier to remember than the usual ?v=a1Vp87d_x or whatnot. But then, two-word names could work as codenames for project. Untidy Bellfrog sounds nice.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    No, what I mean is not about this. I just mean it's so hard to find totally non-existent, let alone real unused words that even seemingly-random letter combinations turn out to be known words in some languages. For example I've used UntidyWelloffBellfrog just as a "seed" to remove random parts and get Udyber and Tyllog look more concise to me and which I would expect to be non-existent words. Yet it turns out these words exist and can be found all over the Internet.

todd8 6y ago

Five of us were investigating starting a company together. After a few meetings, the issue of a name came up and we arranged for a face-to-face meeting to brainstorm. I didn’t want a name like, System Administration Software Inc because what would we do if we ended up writing software for garage door openers. I suggested picking a catchy name that wouldn’t identify what we made too narrowly. Among the names I proposed that I still remember over 30 years later were Apache and Emerald City Software; someone else proposed Veritas. None of these were unanimously liked by the group. I then recalled a unique hostname used by a friend and suggested Tivoli, everyone liked it and the name is still used today. There was one wrinkle, when I went to the state’s Attorney General’s office to register the name for incorporation, I discovered that there was already a Tivoli Inc in Texas. (I didn’t realize that there was a small town in Texas by the name Tivoli.) So I tacked on another word and the company’s new name became Tivoli Systems. Out of the original group, only two of us actually started the company. We quit our jobs and went all in.

mjh2539 6y ago
There was a Tivoli that was acquired by IBM. Was that you guys or the other company?