What's in a name?

Question

I am designing a new product for my team to develop at my corporate job. I feel the project will pave a new direction for my team. I am creating a presentation to sell the idea; however, I am having trouble naming the solution. Have you ever named a product before? What attributes helped you name your idea? Is a catchy acronym important? What was/is your muse?

Answer 1

I like naming things, and if it's just internal I've found the actual name doesn't matter as long as it's a word which wouldn't normally be used. It soon enters company lingo.

I like to come up with a word, then invent a convoluted backronym for it. This normally makes people smile and helps the presentation along...

A recent example: Spengler, "Simple Procedures Examing New Gremlins Lowering Error Rates", or how about Mozart, "Media Objects Zoning And Redundancy Technology". Sometimes I struggle, e.g. Liszt: "Licence Integrator Setting Ze Tracks" :)

Since your project aims to provide a new direction, look for interesting synonyms in a thesaurus. How about things which give direction, compass, lodestone, etc. Gods and myths are a rich source of ideas. How about Khusor, god of navigation? If there are particular words you want to work into a backronym, e.g. "Production" and "Team", perform a regex search of a large word list for .*P.*T.*

However, it would be a shortsighted management team who greenlighted a project based on a cool name. The name just provides an easy way to communicate the idea once the project is given the go-ahead. Getting it to that stage involves coming up with an short elevator pitch, e.g. "we spend 100 hours of developer time, and save 5000 hours of department xyz time" which becomes the takeaway of your presentation.

Answer 2

Stick with a catchy internal codename until you can come up with something serious that fits your product.

Answer 3

In few such naming exercises , I have found that acronyms are usually received well (especially business users). It does not even have to be a perfect acronym , even "almost" a acronym will do. But the acronym must mean something in itself to have that extra punch.

For ex : BEAST - Best Execution Suite

Now BEAST does not technically expand to what it stands for but the business users chose it with glee because BEAST "sounded" so nice!

Answer 4

Two options:

• Give it a short, catchy name which is a real word and may or not be an acronym for the actual, meaningful name. (Example: BLAM! - Business Layer Architecture Manager)
• Give it a short, catchy name which just says what it is. (Example: The Business Layer)

Note the emphasis on "short" and "catchy." :)

Answer 5

Since you wrote corporate, i would (on your place) use short codename and leave final naming to marketing department. Saves time for developing.

After all, we are developers. Not marketing experts, accountants, lawyers, designers.

Or are we?

Answer 6

Use a name based on you product and have a story for it. It is good for marketing.

Answer 7

In my experience, marketing and management will ultimately decide the name (and indeed the version number!) apropos of nothing, and it's likely to shift a number of times over the course of development. As a developer - even an architect - don't get attached to any name you suggest.

On the bright side, that makes it practical to use a fixed codename internally for your projects, something you can choose. So long as it's not offensive (because it's remarkable how often namespaces escape into the real world), have fun.

My favourite codename (for my least favourite project): Sisyphus

(oh, and really big deal - this has happened to me - make sure the name chosen isn't already in use for a similar product!)