Choosing a proper name for your product is equally important as naming variables, functions, classes, etc for code readability and future maintainability.
Is it hard for you to come up with the product name and where do you get your ideas from? Have you ever changed the product name afterward?
I build libraries for Named Data Networking (NDN). I name my libraries with "NDN" and the platform / programming language of the library.
There's no hyphen in these names, so that they can be used as Twitter hashtags.
For applications based on these libraries, I name them with library name + application main feature:
They serve as examples of my libraries.
it all starts with a
t.Most of the naming for our internal projects/products either comes from topics/terminology related to the team's name and/or the projects/products purpose.
For example, the engineering team is called Hive, so many internal projects are named around bees: HoneyFlow, Nectar, etc.
We name our individual sprints on projects as well, just following a generalized topic like "animals". So each sprint is named after an unique animal (i.e. current sprint is Chilesaurus and previous sprint was Dingo).
Projects that have a purpose would be like calling an internal architecture system "Core" or calling a micro-service for connecting with different content providers, the "Content Service". Anything public would be prepended with the company's identifier (for package names). We occasionally use acronyms, but those can be a slippery slope. We call our "Document Management System", "DMS". As a general rule I don't like acronyms as they can be gate-keepers and misinterpreted for something of a different meaning.
In my experience with development and naming projects, rarely does the name make a significant impact. You obviously want to avoid offensive naming schemes, but one of the largest technology companies is called "Apple". You run the risk of trying to market yourself and compete with SEO with generalized terms (i.e. dev.to likely had steep competition initially), but good ideas often rise to the top.
That's actually pretty clever to associate the product with some central subject 😉
This way you build a unique ecosystem, that is easily distinguishable by the users 😉
It's a long and painful process.
Ikr 😉Just curious, could you elaborate on the inspiration behind the 'Forem'? 👀
I always merge two meaningful names into one
Taskord = Task + Record
Gitote = Git + Remote
etc
Gitote 😔
Yea, It didn't sustain because Gitea grew a lot than gogs!
That's an interesting approach, I've seen the pattern before 😉
I use the WuTang name generator. But all my libraries are called "Childish Gambino" 🤷♂️
How many times you have to run it to come up with something useful? 👀😀
I use popular movie names like Neo from matrix, Leonardo di Caprio the actor and so on.
It will make sure, it sounds familiar to people.
You can try this one:
namelix.com/
Enter related words, choose the type of "brand" name... and boom! you have hundreds of ideas.
Thanks for sharing, it's awesome! 😉
I like how most of the results are actually meaningful 😉👍