naming

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Naming is hard, yes, even, especially for a personal site since you have to pick both a name you like as a representation of yourself, and one that hasn’t been already taken, though sometimes you can ask nicely (or pay a lot) for domains that are registered but unused.

Because it is a general truism, the phrases "naming is hard" or "names are hard" are frequently heard in the chat when discussing names, especially for products or software.

Often, coming up with a name for a URL for a new site to represent you isn't easy either.

Bikeshed

A group of people discuss, debate, or arguing about a name of naming is commonly referred to as a bikeshed or bikeshedding.

Guides

Onym Resources: "This guide is an on-going open source attempt to organize the best tools and resources for naming things"

Naming Considerations

Branded vs more general names

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/108352418240054955
- "Developing Mastodon, I strive to use terminology that is familiar to as many people as possible so as to not put up unnecessary barriers in understanding. For this reason I am happy that we went away from calling posts "toots". It has always been a point of friction for people. Not that I dislike branding, quite the opposite, but in my experience receiving feedback over half a decade, it had a negative effect on the platform for little benefit." @Gargron May 23, 2022

Name generators

https://www.name-generator.org.uk/ - various use cases including blog/website names
https://www.articulatemarketing.com/blog/project-names
Generate awesome Javascript project names
npm Project Name Generator
https://www.behindthename.com/random/
https://www.shopify.com/tools/business-name-generator
...

Silo Examples

Google

https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1587640766696140800
- "It’s pretty simple: Google Meet (original) was previously Meet, which was the rebranded Hangouts Meet. Meet has been merged with Google Duo, which replaced Google Hangouts. Google Duo has been renamed Meet, and Meet has been temporarily named Google Meet (original), for clarity" @tomgara November 2, 2022

Issues

Page name

Discussion: should we rename this page? /s

Articles

Articles about naming.

2021-03-41 One Year in the IndieWeb: "The IndieWeb is Poorly Named"
2019-06-07 German Naming Convention
2019-08-09 Here Is How The Pentagon Comes Up With Code Words And Secret Project Nicknames (originally published by "The War Zone", has some heuristics for naming)
2020-11-19 NYT: Finding the Right Words / The New York Times is releasing guidelines for how we describe our products
2021-03-19 BBC News: Taiwan: Dozens change name to 'salmon' to get sushi deal — In some countries people can change their names multiple times, quickly, for any particular reason.
2022-04-07 The Great Restaurant Name Vibe Shift / There’s a reason so many restaurants have *almost* the same name.
- Naming is trendy and cargo culty.
2022-06-03 Best Practices for Naming Variables: What the Research Shows
2022-10-03 Annals of Artificial Stupidity. Language Log quotes a large section of an article from the Wall Street Journal about the difficulties still encountered by people with "unusual" characters in their names.

Brainstorming

Assumptions about names

There’s an oft cited article (which ironically lacks citations of its own) about common mistaken assumptions about names (which is likely a mix of actual bad assumptions, and what seems to be made up by the author), whereas it really should cite articles like this: https://www.kron4.com/news/list-of-illegal-baby-names-in-the-united-states-and-around-the-world/
- "" @Kaile Hunt