How to come up with a fun project name?

Question

I was thinking, that all of my projects have boring names. For example, if making a math library, I'd call it math. Sometimes, I would add a prefix with my initials, so it'd become pmmath or *pm_math*. Boring, isn't it?

How do people come up with fun or at least, less boring names? Like Apache, Python, Ruby... They're not boring. If you never heard the name before - you can not make any assumptions about what the project is about...

So, I was wondering, how to come up with fun project names? What methods do you use?

Answer 1

I named one of my projects photomania. It was s digital photo print order application. Client do not like it, but it doesn't matter. they want it to called photolab and called it so. But my project names and namespaces are still photomania :)

Answer 2

When I used to manage internal development projects (which gave us a lot of flexiblity in choosing names), we usually did it using some kind of a Pun/metaphor type play on words.

A web interface for starting jobs on a server was LaunchPad (it was used to launch/kick off jobs)

A web interface for a daily archiving of data files was Disk Janitor (does cleanup)

An internal data dictionary app was Webster

An app to manage logos for our online application was "LogoMotion" (that was kind of a stretch)

An app for copying (cloning) report templates was Dolly.. etc.

Here's an old entry from Coding Horror on the topic.

Answer 3

I name my work projects after volcanoes like: Fuji, Pelee, Etna... But that is for top namespace only. Modules and classes get reasonable names.

Answer 4

Two approaches:

1. Look for similarities between your what your project does and other adjacent words here: http://www.visuwords.com/

2. Look up a cool ancient god name here: http://www.godchecker.com/. Maybe related to what your project does, so you can post it in your project trivia page.

Answer 5

Well, Python, Ruby, and Apache and so forth are basically words the authors thought were neat. Each might or might not have some grand reason behind it, usually its just that the authors thought they were cool. For those, you could just find random nouns. You could bias on animals and proper nouns. Being creative is not really something you learn. Perhaps you could to a certain extent, but at some point, you just have to "get" it.

Probably a more interesting thing is to come up with an interesting (not really relevant) word for your application and then try to turn it into an acronym. Usually, it's not that hard. You could even have the first letter be recursive, like GNU, Gnu is Not Unix. A gnu also happens to be an animal. :)

Answer 6

Save the cleverness for your design.

Some of the names for project are not bad, but others are just stupid. You want a person who never before heard of your project to have a clear idea of what your project is about. Any name that does that is good, any name that does not do that is bad.

Answer 7

I wrote a blog entry some years ago on naming free software. I expect most of the points apply to all software, actually:

• Try to keep your name pronounceable by people from across the globe.
• Make sure the name has few hits in Google, so people can find your stuff.
• Descriptiveness is not important and restricts namespace too much. Small projects may benefit from descriptive names, though, and it's certainly simpler. I named one of mine genbackupdata, since it generates backup test data.
• Obscure references are always fun: name your word processor or blog engine Lorem ipsum.
• Password generators can come up with good names: maemo.org is an example.
• Try non-English languages, the more obscure the better. Sanskrit, perhaps? (I reserve the Finnish language for myself, thanks.)
• Do you like a book, movie, or TV show? Ample sources of names, there, especially if they're obscure.
• If you're playing music while thinking about this, pick a name from the currently playing track. Opus3.
• Instead of going for short, simple names, go for long, ridiculous names: "The little blogging engine that not just could, but did, and does, and will do" (TLBETNJCBDADAWD for short).

Answer 8

Just a general advice: avoid using too generic names. Why? Because it makes harder to find your project with a search engine! Some cool names that are hard to search: Löve (Lua-based game engine), Processing (Java-base graphical environment), Fan (JVM/CLR-based programming language).

Answer 9

Perhaps you may search for any similar words from any foreign language or mythology. For example, I tried English > Norvegian translator in Google and came up with interesting names.
Besides, what you call boring might be interesting names for others. Its just a frame of reference.

Answer 10

there are tools to do this :

The Generic Code Name Generator

Code Name Generator

Google Project Name Generator

Answer 11

I think you need to do two things. Take your mothers maiden name and then the name of your first pet and concatenate them.

My new product will be called PottsKim.

PottsKim will be an automated kitchen helper application for the iphone.

The great thing about this method is coming up with the name actually helps you think about what the product should do!

Answer 12

I can suggest some types:

• Something from chemistry theory. f.ex: Germanium, Cobalt, Ytterbium.
• Something from math theory. f.ex: Double Pendulum, Edge Of Chaos, Riemann.
• Something from astronomy theory. f.ex: Andromeda, Celestial Object, Crab Nebula.
• Something from medicine theory. f.ex: Campylobacter, Trypanosomiasis, Leishmaniasis.
• Something from you favorite board or computer game. f.ex: marine :)
• Favorite character from movie or TV. f.ex: Gendalf, Bilbo, Vulpa.
• Famous Scientists names from various areas. f.ex: Van Gogh, Adolf von Baeyer, Rudjer Boscovich.
• You can think of smth you like, f.ex sweets names, shampoo names, etc. etc..
• And also you can mix all of these :)

Good luck :)

Answer 13

Often you'll brainstorm a bit and eventually you hit a name that just clicks for you (e.g. Meta Overflow.)

We had an internal project that involved converting a lot of content from an in-house proprietary format to flash. We ended up calling the project "Mongo" which is the planet out of Flash Gordon. So yeah, it can be pretty obscure.

A pet project of mine I take out and peck at every now and again is a GUI client for the First Internet Backgammon server, commonly known as FIBS. Now a fib is considered a trivial lie, so I've called my program Prevarication. ("Liar" was just too ordinary.)

Google Sets is another tool you could use to come up with ideas based on various words about your project.

Answer 14

Step 1, think of a cool recursive acronym. I.e MIN ((M)IN (I)nterests (N)oone!) .. don't worry about making the name self-critical, the recursive acronym still catches on. Most of your users will share something in common with your chosen name. Nobody needs to know that the M really stands for mathlib.

Step 2, Define some set of coding standards that nobody in their right mind will follow, make exceptions only for brilliant contributors and immediately put them in charge of code review. Give preference to amateur coders who make the acronym non-critical of the project, or contribute animated sprites in makefiles. Foster arguments at all costs, those get you exposure. Calling people "terminally stupid" might help, "jackass" or "moron" are sure fires on public lists, especially if their e-mail ends with @intel.com.

Step 3, After you get popular, make sure you don't tramp on someone else's name space, if you do, send them beer, cash and attractive members of the opposite (or same, depending on who you're dealing with) sex.

Step 4, Find someone who works at Google with a son/daughter in your acceptable age range that is at least mildly attractive. Court them, get married in secret and start all conversations with your startled in-law with "If only someone had discovered MIN ..." At this point, your unemployment is Google's problem, not his/hers.

Step 5, profit.

You are, of course, free to reverse 2 and 3.

Prior to voting this down .. if you have not realized that I was simply being funny .. well ...

So, hmm.. Random Stack Overflow Question Answerer +1 , Darth Vader 0.

Cheers, --R2D2

(Gotta love wiki posts!)

Answer 15

My magical recipe to come up with a funny project name : My English is not very good but I'm quite fluent in French (langue maternelle, entre autres raisons) and I like to make really bad puns and plays on words, and try to translate them... Do I need to explain further ? It's a kind of confusion based name generation. If it makes me laugh and look pretty, it is good.

Okay, an example :

Plyme, an experimental distributed and disconnected text editor built on Mercurial. The name came from "plume", which can be translated by "feather" or "fountain pen". Since it is for writing stories, that's better with the last interpretation. Then, it is written in Python, so the 'u' became an 'y', which have the same sound between French and Alemanish (Swiss German). And the un-intended joke : each writter can make "harvest" sheets of text (plys...) and browse through them (to ply...) (Well, project disbanded because Dropbox is better suited...)

Answer 16

At our place we just developed a small application that handles change and incident requests. After thinking about a name for some time we came up with a title that is in my opinion quite clever and a good example of how to combine creativity with descriptiveness.

The tools name is

INCA

A) This servers as an acronym (maybe more a backronym) for Incident aNd Change Administration. This describes the functionality of the tool quite well.
B) We have a random noun that provides a basis for a neat logo if needed.