What's in a Project Name?

Two sets I have used. The element names: carbon, helium, lithium, etc. Celestial bodies: Jupiter, Triton, Andromeda, etc. I once named a series of servers after the planets but quickly ran out of names. That list is even shorter now that Pluto has fallen off the list.

Our internal projects and release names are named after songs people can identify with. The names are usually neutral, and well… music is an endless source of inspiration.

Acronyms are horrible and functional names don’t usually “stick”. I try to find a one word name that plays off the functionality somewhat. A double-treeview allocation tool was called Dryad.

Question: do you include your project name in your namespace hierarchy? YourCompany.Arsenic.Data or YourCompany.Lithium.Web.WebControls? Does that namespace get changed before the product is released?

I use president names or myname+(some number)

I’m not very creative heh.

We use pornstar names.

We don’t do client work though.

We still do it the boring “what it does” way too, but if it were up to me it would be after Transformers characters.

@Haacked Wikipedia (of course) knows all the U.S. submarines ever build: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submarines_of_the_United_States_Navy

people who love god names would probably refer to http://pantheon.org/

For a little while, I used two sets for projects: animals and food.

For example:
Cat Crpe
Whale Melon
Hawk Fajita

Sounds funny, doesn’t it?

Speaking of:

In the end, however, attempting to quantify the benefits of a naming project may be just as small-minded as, well, attempting to quantify the benefits of a name. For the lucky client who truly clicks with his or her namer, the collateral benefits go far beyond nomenclature. There are new words to learn. Fun games to play. And, in the case of the Monkeys, unimpeachable warmth and love. “We got so much more than a name,” says Robin Bahr of 98point6. “I mean, I got a name for my daughter. One of our senior executives identified strongly with ‘Mescalanza.’ No one calls him Jim anymore. His name is Mescalanza.” Meanwhile, she says, “our senior manager for Internet development just fell in love with the name ‘Jamcracker.’ And so today, the Harvey meeting is known as the Jamcracker meeting. There are 300 people at this company who identify Jamcracker with Harvey.”

Bahr claps her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she says. “I forgot. I shouldn’t be mentioning these names to a reporter. Technically, we don’t have ownership of those names. Jamcracker is still the Monkeys’ property.”

Bahr stops for a moment, as if listening to herself. Then she bursts out laughing. “Listen,” she says. “I take it back. You write whatever you want to write. If someone out there wants to name their company Jamcracker, God bless them. And good luck to them.”

So this happened today, as I was cleaning up some spam…

:frowning_face:

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