

How do you name your applications? - dviola

I&#x27;ve seen this is one topic where most programmers struggle before starting a project.<p>How do you name your apps?<p>Do you think is important to name them well?<p>Where do you find the inspiration?<p>How much effort do you put into that?
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LarryMade2
If its going to be consumed by the public - yes.

One of my earlier database apps for an in-office app ran on FoxBase, guess
what people called it? It had the fox logo and such. Good or bad other
programs were assumed to be "FoxBase" too because of the ID screen and lack of
a definitive name, was kinda hard presenting it without a unique name.

The revised database system using PHP, I gave it a name: WANDA (currently
stands for - Web Accessible Nimble Database Architecture) A whole lot better
then its development name, "the Web Database" I think having a name helped
differentiate it from other programs, also picking one that is short, fun,
easy to remember also helps for word of mouth adoption. The different
applications within WANDA have more mundane names like WANDA Mail List, or
WANDA Librarian, but with WANDA being so short it works.

I don't know about weird names, you can get too out there and people wont be
able to recognize or spell it much less remember what its called ("Cuil",
"Xara Extreme", "Quark Express", really?)

I think proper names are a good start if nothing else comes to mind,
especially if they relate to the application's purpose, or at least are easy
to remember.

Mainly what I did was decide I wanted the name to be a female name that was an
acronym for something (female being friendlier and more efficient sounding),
so I listed out relevant words and started testing acronym ideas. WANDA was
the first that struck - (the movie A Fish Called Wanda did have some influence
there, gotta go with the loosely related Monty Python reference...)

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na85
The trend _used to be_ that you would call your project by a descriptive name.
GCC for "GNU Compiler Collection" or fnotifyd for "Frank's Notifyer Daemon".
Tmux is the "Terminal MUltipleXer", etc.

Commercial projects or free projects that need marketability often take on
names that are at least tangentially-related. The names "Windows", "Stripe",
and "Cairo" are all at least somewhat related to what they do. Windows is a
GUI-driven OS with windows in it. Stripe takes magstripe card payments. Cairo
is a drawing library that no doubt got its name from hieroglyphics.

But then there are a lot of projects with awful names. They might be good
projects, but the names don't mean anything or don't have immediately obvious
connections. A really annoying trend has become "hip" in the last 5 years or
so, which is to pick a random, sophisticated-sounding noun, check if the .io
is available, register your randomSophisticatedNoun.io domain, upload the
(most likely javascript) to github, and then make a Show HN post about it
and/or spam it on your blog.

Rome. PieCrust. Square. Robin. Bluefin. Selennium. Uber.

The names don't mean anything. I saw "Rome" on HN just a day or two ago but
the name is poorly chosen because I can't tell you what they do.

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Alex-Galapagos
I put a lot of effort naming mine.. Usually starts with what is behind the
app's concept and then I play around with words

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NameNickHN
I tend to use keywords as the application name as it makes SEO easier and
people know what the app does by its title.

