Why Such Unimaginative Nomenclature?

apoplectic asks: "Pick a word. A noun would be nice, but not required. Now, imagine a potentially meaningful adjective or other nebbish modifier, select the first letter, and append this to either the beginning or the end of the noun you originally chose. Some examples, include: JBoss, WebL, GStreamer, eMachine, iPod, and of course the XBox. I realize that the exceptions greatly outweigh this rule, but this does seem to be a disproportionately invoked naming standard that lacks a little 'je ne sais quoi'. Why is this so common? Do you really like this 'standard', or is this like something touched on by an episode of Futurama? Have, we have run out of names that have yet to be copyrighted, and all we are left with is Poppler -- or some hideous cryptic name from the aforementioned 'UName' naming standard. Why does it seem as if quite a few applications, along with many a geeky item, follow such unimaginative naming conventions?"

Comments

..uhm

[XiC]

iDunno

Re:The answer's in the question.

[XiC]

Well naming a product a girlsname gives us the oppertunity to chat with each with not sounding like total geeks...

like
geek1: "Have you used Susan too?"
geek2: "Yeah, i am so sattisfied with the result.."
geek3: "Susan sucked!"

good option!

Re:It's the current fashion

[squiggleslash]

Now computers are "cool" accesories, so products have to have suitably cool names. A quick and easy way to do this is to string an initial and a semi-related noun together.

Dude, I'm using dBase II, I am so with it!

The real question

[mrleemrlee]

Wonder what J. Lo thinks?

Another way to go...

[Ratface]

As the availability of simple, catchy, unique names that are real words is drying up I wonder if in the future we will start to see more of the "entire sentence as product name" category - such as I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

How about "It's An Even Better Word Processor" or "What A Great Graphics Card" as product names?

(Of course, some people are already doing this in the form of recursive names - someone already pointed out GNU for instance!)

Re:Another way to go...

[Karellen]

How about the new low-calorie communion wafer "I can't believe it's not Jesus"?

I think we should follow food product naming.

[eyeball]

I propose we rename GNU/Linux to "I can't believe it's not Microsoft."

Re:I think we should follow food product naming.

[greenhide]

Or, to stay truer to the original name:

"I can't believe it's not Unix"

Believing that it isn't Microsoft is pretty easy, actually.

Re:contractions aren't logical either

[Anonymous Coward]

How about when law firms and accounting firms just string together the senior partner's names? Ernst, Young, Jacoby and Myers anyone?

No, but I was always partial to the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe...

--
Rate Naked People at FuckMeter! (Not work-safe [unless your boss is one swingin' jive turkey])

I'm still waiting for the product called

[mpweasel]

eDiot.

OP: The answer ...

[Glonoinha]

All the computer guys that have been around long enough to produce commercial release stuff grew up in a world of eight character filenames.

Which is a better product name:
XBox
Incred~1

The second one is 'Incredible Game Box' but old school computer guys automagically trunc that to Incred~1.

Today's rant brought to you by the letters X,G&

[PapaZit]

Attention free software developers. Yeah, you. And anyone who posts projects to Freshmeat:

The next person to write an app with a gratuitous G, K, or X at the beginning (gPornViewer, kFlamewriter, XBitTwiddler) wins scorn, derision, and a swift kick in the ass, absolutely free of charge. Moreso if you use a name that's already taken.

Re:Today's rant brought to you by the letters X,G&

[dirtstar]

Whew, that was close...

Well, I am off to upload iPornViewer, jFlamewriter, and BitTwiddler.Net. Wish me luck!