
Ask HN: How do I come up with a name for programming language? - philonoist
Thank you for the technicalities and legal methods, but I am here for some creative musing. I am currently thinking of &#x27;Anarchy&#x27;. The language is heavily mathematical( to put it at best, while at the same time I want to be purposefully vague).
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enkiv2
The typical way to pick a name for a language is to choose a dead
mathematician who is obscure enough that only mathematicians are familiar with
his name (so, no Aristophanes, Euler, or Godel) & who hasn't already had a
language named after him. (This worked for Erlang, Church, Haskell, Ada, and a
whole host of others.)

Another popular way is to take a term from mathematics & misspell it. (See:
Clojure, Clozure.)

Languages that are derived from other languages often have themed names -- for
instance, the various javascript preprocessors have mostly coffee-flavored
names, brainfuck derivatives usually include either "brain" or "fuck" in their
names, and befunge derivatives usually end with "funge".

Sometimes, languages are named after imperative verbs (such as the
approximately 3 languages called 'go') or arbitrary physical objects (Rust,
Elm). Language-themed language names are popular, too (LISP, SmallTalk,
Guile).

Languages I've made have been named after fictional characters (MYCROFT, named
after the computer from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, himself named after
Mycroft Holmes), authors (WILSON, named after Robert Anton Wilson), and
descriptive acronyms (GG, the language compiled by GGC, is for generative
grammars).

Anarchy is a pretty loaded term (and I say that as an anarchist); chances are
you'll turn off a lot of people with that name.

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qualsiasi
I'd go with the matematician, Cardano. >
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerolamo_Cardano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerolamo_Cardano)

~~~
solveit
I wouldn't go with the one with a cryptocurrency named after him.

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dman
Pick a boring name. Do not make your adopters fight an uphill battle trying to
sell it to non technical decision makers.

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iDemonix
It depends what your end goal is. To me, Anarchy reminds me of something like
Brainfuck - a hobby project that'll never see serious use. If that's your end
goal, call it what you want as there'll never be that many users anyway.

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lsiebert
I'd use afl or a word mutation engine and the google api, starting with a list
of mathematical terms, and mutate them until you got something with zero
results that you like.

for example z combined with kmeanset as one word in quotes finds no results.

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atrocious
Try smashing bits of related words together. Heavy math: Heath.

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slipwalker
i would go for obscure planet names from star trek universe, and append a
"-lang" suffix ( like Brekka-lang ).

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Lordarminius
Why not Philonist or Philon ?

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LarryMade2
Mathematical + Purposefully Vague ...

Infinity

~~~
LarryMade2
X Y or Z

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sloaken
try this name: Sloaken, or the short version Sloak

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hood_syntax
Typic

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DoreenMichele
Arman.

