I once came up with a great name for a product I was hacking on with my roommate, so we used that name internally. By the time we'd been coding for a few weeks, though, what the product actually was had evolved and the name was no longer relevant (despite being scattered throughout the codebase, the github repo, the directory structure, etc).
Ever since then I've been a codename fan. I go for liquor names (since I work at home across from the booze shelf)- I'm currently building Frangelico.
I generally use either the first thing that pops into my head (sometimes it's just obvious) or the song I'm listening to at the time, either name or a snippet of lyrics. SteelBreeze, ClubThing, Tain, Ronin, Arienette, etc. Works wonders.
Characters from Bananaman. Not my choice, and I can't wait for the list to exhaust... though I like the idea of calling the devs VM test server 'zookeeper'.
When I was with HP calculation division in the early 2000s, the project names came from Star Wars / Star Trek characters. Why? Because with we were working SciFi (SCIentific FInancial) calculators.
I use coffee shops or espresso company names, often local to Seattle. The list is quite limitless. Zoka, Vivace, Rococo, Velton, Olympia, Lighthouse, Ladro, and so on it goes.
LittleBigPlanet, our PS3 game, was (is) called 'ps3test1'. the sequel, LBP2, is... also called ps3test1.
that project really was our first attempt to bring up a devkit, probably with a rotating cube.
the project, and compiled output, on every platform, is called 'pc.elf' (or .vcproj or .exe or whatever)
SIGH
there's an inverse correlation between awesome-ness of directory name and chance-of-shipping, in my experience.
Perl modules (almost) always come with a _Synopsis_ section in the documentation, which describes how to use them. Here's a direct link to the one for `Acme::MetaSyntactic::soviet`:
I've gotten asked a lot where the name Miranda IM came from and I honestly have no idea. I was creating a new solution in Visual Studio and I needed a name. I remember it took under 10 minutes to come up with, I was browsing a bunch of name lists and I came across 'Miranda' and I thought that sure is a strange / unusual name, I'll use that. Turns out it's a fairly common name. I still think it's a good name for the product.
I remember when I was working on ACDSee, the original author said, "If I knew it was going to become popular, I would have picked a better name." The company originally made catalog software, and a Co-op student made ACDSee as a side project. It's sustained the company for almost 20 years.
I find just calling it app_number and moving on helps. I used to go in circles with names, until I realized how much time and sanity I was wasting. Spending more time on developing the product helps me understand it's core value better and, consequently, potential names to communicate that value effectively to new users.
As someone from Brazil, I wonder what kind of words would sound weird to an English speaker like that. I would have thought that most words would be recognizeable, given that English also has its fair share of Latin words.
I just give projects a plain, descriptive name, not worrying too much at first about using the exact, correct words. I have projects with names like “Boggle word list”, “cost matrix solver”, “def_init-initializer-type DRY enabler”, “Ghost Assistant”, and “recursive spiraling dots animation”. I don’t publish my projects until I’ve worked on them for a while, so I don’t mind if they’re not perfect at first.
I don't get to name many projects.
But when I'm naming procedures I want the name to be self-documenting without being too long.
Frequently I get exasperated and name it blah or sdfbdhfs!
