
When I first heard the name "Safari" - ryannielsen
http://donmelton.com/2012/12/19/when-i-first-heard-the-name-safari/
======
SimHacker
At Maxis, we didn't arrive at the totally obvious name The Sims until very
late in development.

At first there was the secret development name, Project X, but everybody had a
Project X, and we certainly couldn't ship with that.

Then there was Jamie's obvious name, Dollhouse, which was quite descriptive,
but boys would hate it.

Then there was Will's quirky name, Super Happy Friends Home, which only the
Japanese would love.

Then there was Jim's high minded name, Jefferson, for the pursuit of
happiness, but it made everybody think of the sitcom The Jeffersons.

Then there was the legendary perfectly descriptive catchy epic name, that
everyone on the team really loved, which we dreamed up together in a
brainstorming session when we were all quite stoned, but by the next day we
all forgot it, and nobody could ever remember what it was again, although we
could all distinctly remember the warm glow of knowing that it was the best
possible name in the world, which everyone would love. Those were good times!
;)

But for some reason, during all that time, despite racking our brains, nobody
ever though of "The Sims", which is retrospect was a totally obvious name for
a continuation of the SimCity franchise focusing on the people in the city.
(The original SimCity manual referred to the people in the city as "the Sims,"
so there was a long standing precedent.)

I have no idea who eventually came up with the name The Sims, and I'm happy
with it, but it definitely wasn't the perfect name that everybody forgot. It's
lost in the sands of time...

~~~
HornThisWay
Were you going to call it "The Buds"? I don't think that's a very good name,
but if I was high, I'd probably think it was perfect.

~~~
SimHacker
By god, that very well might be it! I will have to test that theory be
recreating the circumstances as accurately as possible. To science!!!

~~~
pstuart
Perhaps "Best Buds"?

------
augustl
I think many of you in the Hacker News crowd will recognize this problem that
I'm yet to find a solution to myself:

    
    
        mkdir [blinking cursor]
    

Then 30 minutes passes and you didn't end up making that thing anyway since
you got distracted while thinking up a name for it.

~~~
pistoriusp
I always start with a codename. And for the longest time I've used the
surnames of foreign scientists:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists>

~~~
vetler
There's always Finnish lakes:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Finland> Might be difficult to
pronounce for some, though.

~~~
dugmartin
I've used this list multiple times for personal project codenames:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_the_Americas>

~~~
sdoering
Funny. I use mythological figures. Right now it's "metatron", and "delphi"...

------
yen223
Calling the browser 'Safari' is weird, if you think about it. I remember
trying to teach my mom how to use the iPad to access the internet:

 _"First press the home button"_

 _"Ok"_

 _"Now tap on Safari"_

 _"But I don't want to see animals"_

 _"..."_

And that's when I realized why Internet Explorer was so successful.

~~~
Someone
Well, it fits with the theme. "Safari" is Swahili for "journey" or "trip"
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari#Etymology>)

That fits it in with the browsers of the time:

    
    
      Netscape Navigator
    
      Internet Explorer
    

I would guess the code name 'Alexander' came from 'Alexander the Great', who
not only traveled a lot, but also conquered, just like Safari was aiming to
conquer the Internet. They must have ignored the 'die young' aspect of that
connotation.

Safari also has the right feelings associated with it with almost everybody.
Some will think "hah, killing elephants", others will think "paying people to
help me watch elephants, so that they no longer need or want to kill them",
but nobody (nowadays) will associate negative thoughts (exploiting the
natives; killing rare animals) with it. And, apparently, there also is a link
with surfing the ocean: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfin_Safari>. I think
that may have led to thinking of the name, but I doubt that is strong enough
to choose the name.

~~~
SimHacker
What hasn't anyone developed a browser, and just called it "Browser"?

~~~
yen223
When Android first came out, its browser was called "Browser". I actually
appreciated that.

~~~
roryokane
The stock Android browser is still called “Browser”. My Galaxy Nexus running
Android 4.1.1 has Browser version 4.1.1.

~~~
philwelch
That's almost as brilliantly perverse as the Mac OS originally being called
"System".

~~~
SimHacker
Put it on a platter, son, you'll enjoy it more.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAO0owc4xeY>

------
bdcravens
_“Please don’t let us name the browser after a feminine hygiene product!”_

Ironic that this was a concern, given the later iPad

~~~
donmelton
Damn. I should have used that joke in the essay.

~~~
SimHacker
Or iBrator: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqN6749QqtA>

------
mmariani
Great story. It shows that doesn't matter if you are Apple or a solo
developer, product naming is hard. Actually, as the OP, I find coding easier.
Nevertheless, we can't ship products with placeholder names. I have a little
brainstorming process that goes like this:

1) List the name of all competitors that made into the business plan; // this
is important mainly to avoid problems

2) List of nouns that evoke a basic understanding of the root problem the
program tries to solve; // I know it's obvious, but finding a name right here
create an instant connection with your target users

3) List all the features that make the program stand out; // Again it's
obvious, yet this is a great source of names

4) Mix and match all these these words, throw them into a bucket, and sleep on
it for a while;

5) Usually, after some days have passed I come back, and weed out the crapy
ones; // and...

6) Work a little more on the rest with a dictionary, if needed go back to 3;

7) Finally, when I have a short list of good names I try to find domain names;

8) mkdir <project_name> // or mv <old> <new> :)

How do you go about your process?

~~~
henrikschroder
Ours is pretty much like that, with one more step: Google each candidate name.
Those that get few hits or hits that are completely unrelated to the problem
domain get a +1.

------
McP
It was a poor choice of name in that it gives no hint as to what the
application might actually do.

While on holiday and in need of some internet, a (highly intelligent) friend
searched around the local town and could only found a Mac in a hotel lobby.
Despite being very motivated she was unable to persuade it to open a browser
and eventually gave up and was left wondering how Macs could possibly be
described as intuitive or user friendly.

~~~
eridius
And "Firefox" and "Chrome" are sensible names?

~~~
habitue
Ah, now "Internet Explorer" there's a name! What does it do? Explores the
Internet of course!

~~~
eridius
I still have a fondness for the name "Netscape Navigator". It seems a shame
that we never started using the term "netscape" to refer to the internet.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm so used to Netscape being a brand name, it took me at least ten seconds to
break the word up into its constituent words, and understand what you meant.

------
jballanc
Just for some perspective, in my time at Apple "It doesn't suck" was usually
the highest form of praise possible.

~~~
nicholassmith
I've read that a few times in places, which is interesting on the face of it
as in public the language surrounding Apple products is hyperbolic and
overwhelmingly positive, and internally saying "well, it doesn't suck" is high
praise. The duality of company presences.

------
bengoodger
Product naming can be ridiculously hard. Even if you have something you
personally think is clever, everyone else can think you're a dork.

Related anecdotes:

When trying to come up with a name for Firefox (after having two other names
rejected due to trademark snafus), a friend of mine sarcastically rattled off
a bunch of alternatives using the same prefix as the outgoing "Firebird" on
IRC one night. I think it was "Firecrap, Fireturd, Firefox". I stopped him.
The consonance was great, and the team loved the name. The rest is history.

At the beginning of Chrome, we had to come up with a project name. Inspired
how Netscape did their project naming, we did a vote. The results were truly
awful. I think "Goose" was the winner. At this point Linus came in and put us
out of our misery, "How about Chrome... it's kind of ironic given the UI
design." Everyone agreed that it was much better. That was before we'd written
really any code, so it stuck for the entire project. Shortly before launch the
marketing folk did a brief exploration, but we threw up all over their
suggestions, and Chrome stuck.

~~~
nacker
I had been a Phoenix user for several months when I heard it had run into
problems with the name. When I heard it was going to be called Firefox, I
thought it was the most ridiculous name I'd ever heard! Funny, now I really
like it.

When I first heard the name Barack, though...
<http://rense.com/general84/brck.htm>

~~~
g8oz
Sincerely hope you posted that link in jest

~~~
nacker
Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. \- Sigmund Freud

------
jpxxx
The weird thing about Safari is that it's simultaneously a niche irrelevance
on a minor computing platform, a groundbreaking web browser of major
historical import, and the public face of the most important wad of code in
play on Earth today.

------
benzor
I've always felt that picking a solid name is one of those things that will
never happen while I'm thinking about it intently. Glad to hear it's the same
for the big boys too...

------
Syssiphus
IBrowse would have been a bad choice. There is an Amiga OS Browser which goes
by that name, and it is a little bit older than Safari.

<http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/>

~~~
nikcub
there was also a Cisco product called iPhone

------
philbo
This bit surprised me somewhat:

'Not only had we gotten very used to calling it that, the string “Alexander”
was all over the code and buried in its resources. So the engineering team
wasn’t just curious about the real name, they were worried about correctly and
completely changing the placeholder name at the last minute.'

Why would you litter a codebase with disparate string literals referring to a
"placeholder name" rather than using a single resource file or a single
#define?

~~~
bdash
Resources such as nib files and help files aren't amenable to things like
#defines. Filenames and build system metadata fall in to the same cateogry.
The source code proper is a different story, but is also trivially updateable
via sed or the like.

------
JGuo
Not sure of the actual origin, but it seems to me that Safari is a reference
to "journey", and works with the OS X naming after big cats. Then again it
could just make sense in hindsight.

------
brudgers
Based on no evidence whatsoever, just an intuition about Jobs, I would not be
surprised if the point of reference was _Surfin' Safari_ \- the Beach Boys
song.

It is free from the negative connotations of a reference to Africa and
consistent with the sort of Californian to which Jobs aspired. Apple was
funded by a VW microbus after all.

The play on surfing is consistent with Apple's image of how consumers should
be oriented to use their products.

~~~
icodestuff
I always assumed that was it. Ironically, I haven't heard anyone say "surfing
the web" since Safari came out.

------
msgilligan
I remember when Safari was very buggy in its early versions and some folks
within Apple had taken to calling it "So Sorry". I had several bug reports on
a web app my company had developed for Apple that turned out to be Safari
bugs. They were fixed rather rapidly, which is what would finally convince my
contacts that it definitely wasn't a bug in our web app. "So Sorry" they
said...

------
bluesmoon
I always thought it came from the Hindi word Safari, which translates to
Traveller or Explorer (Safar is a Journey).

I personally codename my projects pffft.

~~~
happimess
According to etymonline[1], it comes from Arabic through Swahili.

[1][http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&s...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=safari&searchmode=none)

~~~
bluesmoon
I suppose they're both of Indo-European origin.

~~~
g8oz
Arabic is Semitic not Indo-European.

------
xsace
free-DOM, it's actually a clever name

------
melvinmt
But why is the icon a compass though?

~~~
terhechte
When you're on a safari in amazonas, that's what you need in order to find
your way (well, nowadays a GPS might do wonders, but when the name safari was
historically established, there was no gps)

~~~
groby_b
Trust me, when you're out in the boondocks, you still want a compass. Sure,
GPS is great. Until you can't find a satellite, or it runs out of batteries,
or a gazillion other things that can go wrong with electronics in the
wilderness.

------
ksec
The name Safari is still one of those mystery to me, I like the name, and my
guess it properly came from the idea of Navigation -> Compass - > Safari.
Although i was expecting a post to truly reveal the mystery behind the reason
for such a name.

~~~
georgeg
Safari is a swahili name(Swahili is spoken by people of the East-coast of
Africa). It means a journey or an adventure. It could also mean a great
undertaking. Steve must have known this from his many journeys.:)

~~~
opinali
I also suspect that this name came from some snark from Jobs against the web.
If the browser is Safari, then logically, the WWW is a wild jungle. Even more
relevant today, as Apple champions the idea of walled gardens in opposition to
open application platforms.

------
marijn
I always assumed it was a reference to "Surfin' Safari", the Beach Boys song.
Maybe not.

~~~
danielsamuels
That name is used on the WebKit blog - <https://www.webkit.org/blog/>

------
hughw
Oh the irony, that Safari on my MBP has a rendering bug, probably acceleration
related, that truncates the text in the sixth paragraph.

------
stuaxo
"We could ship a browser in a year" he missed the second part "thanks to work
done on kHTML which we based it on"

~~~
Someone
I would think it is more 'did not feel fitting for this story' than 'missed'.
He isn't mentioning any other parts they built on either (Cocoa, the Mac OS
Unix-based networking code, the font designers for Mac OS system fonts, the
GNU project for gcc, K&R's progamming language design, etc)

~~~
kragen
Shipping a browser in a year, starting with a browser, is less impressive than
shipping a browser in a year starting from a GUI toolkit.

(To be fair, Mozilla shipped a browser in a few months after founding, and
Konqueror didn't work well enough for me to use it as my primary browser at
the time that the Safari guys took it. And, as the other comment pointed out,
it actually took the Safari guys a couple of years.)

------
RaSoJo
Ancient powerful or mythical cities here. ElDorado, Hamunaptra, Babylon, etc.

------
emehrkay
I feel like I am pretty good at naming things (I dont think about it for too
long, if that matters).

Describe to me a product and I'll name it for you.

~~~
natem345
An app that lets your remotely control monitor on/off &
sleep/hibernate/shutdown/wake your PC.

~~~
simantel
Narcolepsy.

