
How I name my apps - zachwaugh
http://blog.zachwaugh.com/post/9666969587/how-i-name-my-apps
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chops
I like to name my apps like classical pieces:

 _App No. 1 in Erlang_

 _App No. 2 in Haskell_

 _Variations on a theme by Hasbro_

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henry501
Knew a guy in college who named every physics assignment.

"A brief treatise in radioactive decay, or how I learned to stop worrying and
love the α particle."

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mjs00
Do remember to check uspto.gov > trademarks > (2) Search Marks to ensure
something cool you've picked isn't an active/current registered trademark by
another for computer / software / online use.

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cellis
I like to use <http://impossibility.org> for naming apps. It ensures you can
get an _available_ domain that won't be too hard to type/say.

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vikrum

      $ aspell dump master |sed -n $(echo $(($RANDOM % `aspell dump master|wc -l`)))p

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jannes
Is aspell a spellchecker? And does this command randomly select one word from
its dictionary?

(Note: I'm mostly a Windows user nowadays and I have never personally used
aspell, sed, or wc)

What does the p at the end of the line do? Is that a mistake or is it there on
purpose?

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loumf
The p prints the randomly chosen line -- wc -l is the number of lines in the
file, (random % lines-in-file) picks a random one, 'sed -n 30p' prints the
30th line.

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andrewbaron
I always like to hit up "Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band
Names": <http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~bwhitman/10000.html>

I'll find words I like and fit them together myself, like Rocketboom, or
Humanwire, e.g.

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thisisnotme
It would be fun (and probably exists) a fake word generator that created words
that were easy to spell and pronounce, but were basically meaningless.

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zachwaugh
This is pretty much exactly what Wordoid does with the bonus of telling you if
the domain is available - <http://wordoid.com/>.

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6ren
I just number them. e.g. "4 thousand billion". _Little Billy Sands_ we call
him.

But seriously, I have given them descriptive names - inspired by the supplier
of meat to MacDonalds in Australia called "The 100% Australian Beef Company".
I figured it was good for googling, and informative. Also reminded me of
Humpty Dumpty ( _my name means the shape I am_ ). And it worked.

Though I note most people go for clever and/or zany names, with creative
spellings (so they be trademarked). An amusing "story" to explain a clever
name can operate as a vector for word of mouth: by passing on the story for
entertainment value, you also pass on the name. It's kind of like product
placement, where the story is the movie. An example is _GNU_. It can also
operate as an in-joke, creating an artificial elite.

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rizumu
I learned of this technique as clustering in a creative writing course:
<http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/cluster.html> And this was the
textbook: [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Natural-Gabriele-Lusser-
Rico/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Natural-Gabriele-Lusser-
Rico/dp/0874771862/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0)

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dominicyen
We used a similar method to get to our name: Bindle. I agree with you on a
short, single word names. To add to that, I would suggest attempting to use
real words, that have simple spelling.

A short naming blogpost can be found here:
<http://blog.bindle.me/post/9048657705/name>

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thetable
I find this technique works too. Come up with general ideas that describe your
product, expand into metaphors. Try synonyms for the metaphors. Combine words.

In the end, the name doesn't have to be descriptive, but it does have to be
unique and pronouncable.

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GMali
And if you really get stuck, try removing vowels and repeating some letters

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tbgvi
Just curious... why would you want to do that even if you're stuck? This is
more of a quick brainstorm method, I don't think he's even looked to see if
the domain name is available at this point.

Also, I'd rather have something like "getflint.com" or "flintapp.com" than
"flnnt.com" or something. When you start getting into cutesy abstractions like
that it becomes hard to remember.

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jarek
Whoosh.

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tbgvi
Touché. I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not though. The fact that people
actually do this when naming something made it pretty hard to figure out if he
was serious.

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mildweed
I'm working to rename my comedy troupe in a similar fashion. My spidergrams
(what I call this type of brainstorming) are very similar.

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richcollins
<http://www.visualthesaurus.com/> is useful for doing this

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rmc
I have never liked this naming scheme because it makes names that are existing
words. This makes it hard to Google.

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ams6110
Just tack on "ly". In this case he would name the app "Flintly"

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jason_tko
You missed a winner with "Spork".

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MostAwesomeDude
I just go with food. Burger, Salsa, Arrabiata, etc.

