5 ms·

I really like these kinds of names with a coherent theme. I think the most widely known ones are the Mac OS X large cat / geographic place names and the Intel l

by yccs27 4y ago

I really like these kinds of names with a coherent theme. I think the most widely known ones are the Mac OS X large cat / geographic place names and the Intel lakes / coves. Are there any more from popular tech companies?

closewith 4y ago
Not a tech company despite their ambitions, but many Volkswagen models are named for winds (in German): * Golf - Gulf Stream, * Jetta - Jet Stream, * Passat - Trade wind, * Polo - Polar winds, * Scirocco - Mediterranean/Saharan wind.
- kubanczyk 4y ago
  Huh? "Polo"! How elegant. Too bad the evidence for it seems to be basically hearsay. Maybe someone digs up a German source? Would be a cool addition to the Polo's Wikipedia articles. (The German Wikipedia says it's after sport not after the polar wind, but it's entirely unsourced.)
  - closewith 4y ago
    It was received wisdom to me, but on closer inspection, it seems to be all nonsense: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/05/inside-the-industry-ttac-finds-the-missing-etymology-of-passat-golf-scirocco-polo/ https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/05/inside-the-industr... My apologies!
account42 4y ago
AMD Linux graphics driver developers use(d) their own naming scheme (separeate from the hardware codenames) for RDNA2 GPUs based on X11 colors and fish names to make it harder to speculate on unreleased hardware based off the open source drivers. This gave us Sienna Cichlid, Navy Flounder, Dimgrey Cavefish, Beige Goby and Yellow Carp. It seems they stopped doing that for the upcoming RDNA 3 cards though.
2143 4y ago
Some car manufacturers have coherent names. For instance, consider BMW. For sedans/hatchbacks there's basically 1 through 8 (1 series, 2 series etc). Even numbered series tend to be high performance models and are usually coupes. Prefix "X" means it's an SUV. Prefix "I" means it's electric. The suffix "i" stands for petrol engine, "d" for diesel, "e" for plugin hybrids (?). The other numbers indicate the relative performance of the engine (ie., 530 > 525) "x-drive" means AWD. An "M" in there means high performance. If there's "competition" tacked on, there's even more performance, and "CS" means it's really badass. ---------- BMW is not the only one with a coherent naming though. Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo etc (just naming a few) also have similar naming strategies.
gostsamo 4y ago
AMD names their processors on italian cities while ServiceNow names their releases on big cities (they have Berlin and Paris and maybe had one on an indian one, but I don't remember).
- irishsultan 4y ago
  AMDs server processors are named after italian cities (Bergamo, Turin, ...), their desktop and laptop CPUs and APUs are painters (Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, ...), but that hasn't been entirely been consistent (e.g. the latest threadripper pro is code named Chagall which refers to a painter, but previous ones had names like Whitehaven).
zote 4y ago
There's Google with dessert themed names for Android versions
- throwaway16374 4y ago
  Google has been pretty bad with released product names, e.g. YouTube Red, Google Wave, G Suite, Google Assistant, Google Home Hub... not very creative
  - hn_go_brrrrr 4y ago
    There is no "Google" for these purposes. Every org has their own practices and there's minimal central review. GFoo is in vogue in some parts of the company, but you won't see that branding in YouTube, Chrome, Android, Fuschia, etc.
- cyphar 4y ago
  Unfortunately, they stopped doing this after Android 9 Pie (2018). All subsequent Android versions are just referred to by version number.
  - hackerbee 4y ago
    They should have gone with Android "Quark"...
bandie91 4y ago
Debian releases are Toy Story characters.
- a_e_k 4y ago
  Ubuntu releases are always alliterative Adjectival Animals (assigned alphabetically).
  - yegle 4y ago
    I'm surprised this is not mentioned on Ubuntu's wiki but this is called Alliteration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration
  - alisonkisk 4y ago
    one project, RedHat/Fedora or something, was a pattern like "word A", "word B related to word A", "word C related to an alternate meaning of word B", etc.
    - a_e_k 4y ago
      Yes, both RedHat and Fedora used a free association-like naming scheme. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/name_history/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/name_history/ (Vouched for parent comment since it was on-topic.)
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Background for the curious: > So, what's with the "Funky Fairy" naming system? Many sensible people have wondered why we chose this naming scheme. It came about as a joke on a ferry between Circular Quay and somewhere else, in Sydney, Australia: > lifeless: how long before we make a first release? > sabdfl: it would need to be punchy. six months max. > lifeless: six months! thats not a lot of time for polish. > sabdfl: so we'll have to nickname it the warty warthog release. > And voila, the name stuck. (First Ubuntu release was "Ubuntu 4.10 - Warty Warthog") https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames
ytpete 4y ago
Flash Player releases toward their later years were codenamed after San Francisco street names, in alphabetical order (a bit like Android's alphabetical dessert names). Another fun thematic one from that era was Adobe's Flex platform, which had two separately codenamed parts: an SDK and an IDE. One release cycle both codenames were food related: Burrito and Hero (like the sandwich). So the follow-on minor release of course used the codenames Super Burrito and Superhero. The overall platform got the codename Superstar (i.e. "Super *"). And then I think the next release after that became "Megastar." As far as I know none of that was planned in advance, much like the story above.
hapidjus 4y ago
Wordpress does Jazz musicians.
tacker2000 4y ago
The themes are fine but the issue i have with mac os codenames (this can apply to anything else though) is that it would be good to keep them alphabetically ordered so you instantly know how recent/old any version is.
V-2 4y ago
They started such a theme with Android Studio - not since the very beginning, but 2020. So far there have been Arctic Fox, Bumblebee, and Chipmunk.
jeroenhd 4y ago
Apple's big cat theme was the funniest one with Puma, Panther and Mountain Lion all referring to the exact same animals that happens to be known by the same name.
- sircastor 4y ago
  I enjoyed Craig Federighi‘s joke name for macOS 11, Sea Lion, back before switched the naming convention.
xattt 4y ago
Intel used to use names from various locations around Oregon (Coppermine, Katamai, etc). AMD used to use horse breed names for various Athlon XP models. Linux Mint is unfortunately named with female names. It’s creepy because leadership is mostly male, and because, by design, people are expected to move on to the next new “release”.
mgdlbp 4y ago
Some are collected at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_name#Commercial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_name#Commercial

by yccs27 4y ago

closewith 4y ago

Not a tech company despite their ambitions, but many Volkswagen models are named for winds (in German): * Golf - Gulf Stream, * Jetta - Jet Stream, * Passat - Trade wind, * Polo - Polar winds, * Scirocco - Mediterranean/Saharan wind.

kubanczyk 4y ago
Huh? "Polo"! How elegant. Too bad the evidence for it seems to be basically hearsay. Maybe someone digs up a German source? Would be a cool addition to the Polo's Wikipedia articles. (The German Wikipedia says it's after sport not after the polar wind, but it's entirely unsourced.)
- closewith 4y ago
  It was received wisdom to me, but on closer inspection, it seems to be all nonsense: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/05/inside-the-industry-ttac-finds-the-missing-etymology-of-passat-golf-scirocco-polo/ https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/05/inside-the-industr... My apologies!

account42 4y ago

AMD Linux graphics driver developers use(d) their own naming scheme (separeate from the hardware codenames) for RDNA2 GPUs based on X11 colors and fish names to make it harder to speculate on unreleased hardware based off the open source drivers. This gave us Sienna Cichlid, Navy Flounder, Dimgrey Cavefish, Beige Goby and Yellow Carp. It seems they stopped doing that for the upcoming RDNA 3 cards though.

2143 4y ago

Some car manufacturers have coherent names. For instance, consider BMW. For sedans/hatchbacks there's basically 1 through 8 (1 series, 2 series etc). Even numbered series tend to be high performance models and are usually coupes. Prefix "X" means it's an SUV. Prefix "I" means it's electric. The suffix "i" stands for petrol engine, "d" for diesel, "e" for plugin hybrids (?). The other numbers indicate the relative performance of the engine (ie., 530 > 525) "x-drive" means AWD. An "M" in there means high performance. If there's "competition" tacked on, there's even more performance, and "CS" means it's really badass. ---------- BMW is not the only one with a coherent naming though. Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo etc (just naming a few) also have similar naming strategies.

gostsamo 4y ago

AMD names their processors on italian cities while ServiceNow names their releases on big cities (they have Berlin and Paris and maybe had one on an indian one, but I don't remember).

irishsultan 4y ago
AMDs server processors are named after italian cities (Bergamo, Turin, ...), their desktop and laptop CPUs and APUs are painters (Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, ...), but that hasn't been entirely been consistent (e.g. the latest threadripper pro is code named Chagall which refers to a painter, but previous ones had names like Whitehaven).

zote 4y ago

There's Google with dessert themed names for Android versions

throwaway16374 4y ago
Google has been pretty bad with released product names, e.g. YouTube Red, Google Wave, G Suite, Google Assistant, Google Home Hub... not very creative
- hn_go_brrrrr 4y ago
  There is no "Google" for these purposes. Every org has their own practices and there's minimal central review. GFoo is in vogue in some parts of the company, but you won't see that branding in YouTube, Chrome, Android, Fuschia, etc.
cyphar 4y ago
Unfortunately, they stopped doing this after Android 9 Pie (2018). All subsequent Android versions are just referred to by version number.
- hackerbee 4y ago
  They should have gone with Android "Quark"...

bandie91 4y ago

Debian releases are Toy Story characters.

a_e_k 4y ago
Ubuntu releases are always alliterative Adjectival Animals (assigned alphabetically).
- yegle 4y ago
  I'm surprised this is not mentioned on Ubuntu's wiki but this is called Alliteration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration
- alisonkisk 4y ago
  one project, RedHat/Fedora or something, was a pattern like "word A", "word B related to word A", "word C related to an alternate meaning of word B", etc.
  - a_e_k 4y ago
    Yes, both RedHat and Fedora used a free association-like naming scheme. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/name_history/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/name_history/ (Vouched for parent comment since it was on-topic.)
- capableweb 4y ago
  Background for the curious: > So, what's with the "Funky Fairy" naming system? Many sensible people have wondered why we chose this naming scheme. It came about as a joke on a ferry between Circular Quay and somewhere else, in Sydney, Australia: > lifeless: how long before we make a first release? > sabdfl: it would need to be punchy. six months max. > lifeless: six months! thats not a lot of time for polish. > sabdfl: so we'll have to nickname it the warty warthog release. > And voila, the name stuck. (First Ubuntu release was "Ubuntu 4.10 - Warty Warthog") https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames

ytpete 4y ago

Flash Player releases toward their later years were codenamed after San Francisco street names, in alphabetical order (a bit like Android's alphabetical dessert names). Another fun thematic one from that era was Adobe's Flex platform, which had two separately codenamed parts: an SDK and an IDE. One release cycle both codenames were food related: Burrito and Hero (like the sandwich). So the follow-on minor release of course used the codenames Super Burrito and Superhero. The overall platform got the codename Superstar (i.e. "Super *"). And then I think the next release after that became "Megastar." As far as I know none of that was planned in advance, much like the story above.

hapidjus 4y ago

Wordpress does Jazz musicians.

tacker2000 4y ago

The themes are fine but the issue i have with mac os codenames (this can apply to anything else though) is that it would be good to keep them alphabetically ordered so you instantly know how recent/old any version is.

V-2 4y ago

They started such a theme with Android Studio - not since the very beginning, but 2020. So far there have been Arctic Fox, Bumblebee, and Chipmunk.

jeroenhd 4y ago

Apple's big cat theme was the funniest one with Puma, Panther and Mountain Lion all referring to the exact same animals that happens to be known by the same name.

sircastor 4y ago
I enjoyed Craig Federighi‘s joke name for macOS 11, Sea Lion, back before switched the naming convention.

xattt 4y ago

Intel used to use names from various locations around Oregon (Coppermine, Katamai, etc). AMD used to use horse breed names for various Athlon XP models. Linux Mint is unfortunately named with female names. It’s creepy because leadership is mostly male, and because, by design, people are expected to move on to the next new “release”.

mgdlbp 4y ago

Some are collected at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_name#Commercial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_name#Commercial