Friday, November 27. 2009Application Naming
Just a short article about something that has concerned me lately: Please take some time for choosing an application name, and think hard about it before coming to a final decision. I know that you are already giving it a lot of thought, this is not meant as bashing. But please consider the following:
Now, before you start saying something like, "Yeah right, coming from the guy who named an application Amarok..." Yes, Amarok is an obscure name, but we were lucky to establish it as a brand. Also, we've been through some of the pain described above as well: Amarok was once officially called "amaroK". While we initially thought this looked cool, we did eventually realize that this kind of spelling gives you more trouble than anything, so we had to change it, which was painful. Don't repeat our mistakes  Trackbacks
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" I know that this name has a meaning in the native language of its main author, but to the rest of the world, it has no meaning at all."
I don't agree at all with this idea : English is not the only language... strange to fight for choice and diversity in software and promote one language usage. "Ubuntu" didn't mean anything to me before, althought, it's a good name.
I, for one, welcome our English overlords!
More seriously, I agree with regisg. Authors should be allowed to name their apps in their own language, if the name is something the rest of the world can spell and pronounce. If people come to me and say that I have to use English names because English is more important than my language, I feel offended. Granted, Choqok does seem like something of a bit difficult name, perhaps not the best choice?
Rekonq considered changing it's name but the developers had become attached to the current one.
That's a problem not only with branding but with writing, programming, many other things probably: By the time you realise that you really should get rid of something you have become attached to it, which is why an outside opinion can be so useful and why business employs editors and brand-consultants. p.s. agreed digiKam (had to think hard not to write Digikam or DigiKam as I normally would) is awesome.
I totally agree with the author.
I really like the rekonq webbrowser but I do not like it's name. Yes, it sounds rebellious and that's good in the beginning but for reaching the "general user" this is a bad name. Of course the developers are attached to the name but It does not take that much time and they will attach to a new one. Think about Phoenix-> Firebird-> Firefox or Ethereal-> Wireshark and others. Do you really miss the old names?
@Markey
i have to say, that i agree will aal of this thumbs up writing choqok is always hard and i have ever to thing twice how to type it. these programs deserve a better naming! vote for it @regisg think its the same as mentioned above about the name Amarok, Ubuntu established the name as a brand.
Mark,
I just replied to your comment on aseigo's blog, but your're right. completely right! As I stated earlier I would love to see Rekonq get more traction in the KDE community. It is a 'bad-ass' browser, very simple, very clean, very fast. It is comparable with Google Chrome on the level of user experience, and I think that it makes a very good candidate to become the default browser in KDE. However, the name must change. As you stated, the name makes no sense to anyone not knowing Konqueror and not knowing the issues surrounding it. idea: name it 'KDE Conqueror'.
"the name makes no sense to anyone not knowing Konqueror and not knowing the issues surrounding it."
And the name Konqueror makes no sense to anyone not knowing (Internet) Explorer and (Netscape) Navigator.
> And the name Konqueror makes no sense to anyone not knowing (Internet) Explorer and (Netscape) Navigator.
At some point you become a brand, and it no longer matters (how you're called, what the name means). The name itself gets a meaning, and becomes cool. Calling your browser ReNetscape or ReExplorer however, always makes it stand in the shadow of it's processor. It makes it hard to become a brand.
p.s. Also re digiKam, it would be good if showFoto were more discoverable, part of which could be renaming it to DigikamONE or something.
Dare I suggest one more completely insane idea... that user facing application names, maybe, just maybe, could hint at what the program does? You know, so new people to Linux actually don't need to learn 1000 random app names and what they do?
"We don't need that!" I hear the cries. "Look at how many other project names are meaningless, therefore meaningless names MUST be right! Internet Explorer, OpenOffice, Office, Network Manager, Movie Player are all wrong! We have program descriptions in Linux menus to take care of that, and NO-ONE will EVER see the name anywhere else! Right? Right...? Anyway, I'm not proposing that every name be exactly what the app does. Just that it hints at it. OpenOffice is fine, without being called "Office Suite". I'm not suggesting we force people to name apps sanely. Just asking people to consider it. Just remember that when a user searches on google for some type of app, that you want to show up in the results. You want them to see the name and know what your app does. You want to minimise how much explaining they need to do when they mention it in a passing conversation.
Well, why just bash the new kids?
Kopete is a really strange name and nobody knows how to pronounce it. KWin is just boring like all the Kxxxx name, but still it seems to have won against Kwin (Quinn). Okular is a bad name. Quassel is a bad name. Most german only K names are bad. KMyMoney is a geeky and dumb name and the users wanted to change it. Guess what happened? These are just few examples the list goes on and on .. just steop out of your KDE world and look how windows user think about your name. It will be a disheartening experience. Maybe even for Amarok  Plasma, Phonon, Solid and most of the KDE4 names are very good. More of that would be nice. I think after the rebranding KDE marketing should convince authors to do a wide spread application renaming. Make them international, obious and cool. It will make KDE a better place overall. But geeks are sturborn, so I won't hold my breath.
Kopete - agreed, not an easy name to learn.
KWin - it's a window manager, it's OK for it to have a boring name Okular - I think that's a good name. Quassel - also an odd name KMyMoney - agreed, clunky Plasma, Phonon, Solid and most of the KDE4 names are very good. More of that would be nice. - agreed
Actually,
Quassel is not an odd name, when you know german and the main intention of this app. "Quasseln" is a german "slang" word for "long talking which can be boring for others" "sie quasselt sehr viel am telefon" oder "er quasselt ganz gerne" are german sentences. So, Quassel is an IRC Client, which means in most cases: Someone talks with someone else (if you see IRC as a form of radio transmission) "Q" in Quassel gives a hint about the Qt Framework I do think, that Quassel actually is a good, well chosen, application name, actually it lacks the a description of the meaning of the word "Quassel". Some application names have a special story, which explains most of the time why an app is named. Take "Leonov" as an example. It has something to do with "space", Mr. Leonov was the first guy which was doing a spacewalk, connected with a cable, and now "Leonov" is the name of an application, for Launchpad. (The story why launchpad is named launchpad should be obvious) Regards, \sh
Your long explanation only a German can fully understand proves my point that Quassel is a bad name.
How would you feel if it was named after some russian or chinese slang term?
What is wrong with Okular? It implies something to do with vision or seeing, which I think is very appropriate for a generic document viewer.
When I see somebody writing about choqok all I see is thousands of chocobos running on some plains.
I would say that the argument "it's established as a brand" is really bogus.
Either you promote fictional non self-explanatory names (like Amarok and Ubuntu) or you don't. So you indirectly say "your puny applications are not worth branding" instead of "let's try to find a way to promote the name and establish a brand". See the list of Toms names, most applications have a name that does not directly imply it's function. The only thing you could/should say is "the application has a name I don't like". In the case of "digiKam" I on the other hand totally agree. It's hard to establish a brand name that leads to major problems when used in normal English sentences. But that's just about the type of spelling not the brand name itself.
This is not about making everything KDescriptiveName or something.
It's about making a name which can be branded, and become well established. Letting your application sound like "showcock" is not helping. :-p
A great post and it's something KDE needs to look at. My pet peeve about KDE is the naming of applications, although it is getting better (phonon, solid, network manager,
Firstly, all those applications beginning with K - Koffice, KSnapshot, KStars... drives me nuts. Maybe the developers want to make it absolutely clear that THIS IS NOT A GNOME APPLICATION. As someone said earlier, how about naming the application based on what it does. Now matter how good the application is, a crappy name will really reduce the audience. Case in point: Konquerer and Rekonq. the word Conquerer really does have negative connotations in English. Do I really want something that is going to Ghengis Khan my desktop ? Personally, I really like the name Choqok, I didn't realise Digikam was digiKam and MyMoney & PackageKit beat KMyMoney and KPackageKit any day of the week. Nothing tops Mailody, though, as not the most well researched name. Mail + Melody = Malady. Sure, developers can and should use internal names, but they should stay internal. Branding is what you wrap the goodies in so people take them off the shelves
I would rename Skrooge also. As a non-English speaker I find it weird. I always have to google it to check its spelling.
Something like FinanceManager would be better IMHO.
As a realist I don't see KDE marketing successfully rename all KDE apps that have german sounding geeky names (from Amarok to Quassel) with something meaningful marketable and cool.
More realistically would be to make the alternative meaningful name more prominent. If you search for Music Player or "Musik Abspielprogramm"(on a german KDE SC) in KRunner and I will find something! What a concept! In the menu the alternative meaningful name should be even bigger than they are in Kickoff right now .. push the geekiness to the sidelines and make computers easier. But I guess proud Amarokers wouldn't want that, right?
Just to clarify: "more prominent" as in have a few alternatives or tags. So that when I search for "Musik" in my german KDE I will find Amarok.
And your brand argument is really dumb. Ask a few people on the street what they think "Amarok" is. Some might mention the VW car, most will give you blank stare. Amarok has no brand in the real world.
> Ask a few people on the street what they think "Amarok" is. Some might mention the VW car, most will give you blank stare.
Please, also ask them if they know what Linux is, and what KDE is. 
With every release of OSX or Windows articles mention Linux (lately just Ubuntu).
So for Firefox, Linux, Ubuntu or OpenOffice you have a good chance of finding people on the street that have heard of it. Not so for Amarok.
Nice, that you state yourself that amarok is an "obscure" name
But the brand argument...? Surely it's a brand in the community, but for others it's nowhere different than choqok, kopete, krita, gwenview and others. IMHO these weird names are much more a problem than strange capitalization.As for the writing, the whole world is able to write iPod and iPhone, so why shouldn't that work with amaroK? Even if not, did that make Apple rename the products to Ipod and Iphone? The only difference is that iPod is a well known brand... just like amaroK
As for the writing, the whole world is able to write iPod and iPhone.
- because it's the English "I" you already pronounce separately. "I phone" - because it's consistently done (iChat, iPhoto, iTunes, iWork) So it easily becomes a recognizable brand. If you throw marketing at something, it really helps if the name is working with you, instead of against you.
Just like KDE had the "K" it's brand. Now it is lost and we need to someway get all software what use KDE platform to be noticed as KDE Applications.
We should not be afraid to use K in the applications names. It just need to be think carefully how to use it. Kopete, Amarok, digiKam, KMail, KOffice, Kaffeine, Krita, Kwrite, Kate, K3b, Konsole, Okulas etc. are all great names with the K on them (It is sad that Amarok developers were afraid and changed it from amaroK to Amarok). But then there are names what does not follow K branding. Gwenview, Skrooge, ekiga, Bangarang etc. Some of them are bad because you believe the application is a KDE application but it is for GNOME. It acts different ways and does not fit to KDE Plasma Desktop at all. We should use application names what makes the application unique. Noticable among others. So when someone says the application name, you can not mistake it to any other application. Just like now it is possible with the "Terminal" word. You get Konsole and the Gnome version with same name. Normal user speaks about terminal and they are not sure which one they speak.
To all of you who only want english sounding names, please use Windows. This is Linux and there isn't only one language!
@Harry: 'KDE Conqueror' looks horrible. It just feels plain wrong. There should be a K there because the C looks stupid.
Newsflash: No, it's not just Linux.
KDE is now cross-platform, so we have to consider the Windows and Mac markets too. Additionally this has absolutely nothing to do with the specific platform. Creating good brand names is important for any platform, and yes, even for Linux.
You probably think "Kroupware" was a great name.
BECAUSE this is Linux applications should have international translated names that are easy to discover and learn for people all over the world, not just german geeks(slight exaggeration). So provide translated, tagged and meaninful application names and swallow your pride, then maybe once world domination is partly reached you will have a brand. At the moment only Firefox, Linux and maybe OpenOffice have a brand. Stop kidding yourself.
No! The application names should NEVER be translated to different languages. EVER NEVER!
That is BIGGEST mistake what can be done. You do not translate your name to be correct by other language meaning, or anyone elses. If you translate application name, you never find any help for it. You never can discuss about same application with other users who has different language than you have. GNOME does that and it is TERRIBLE mistake. HUGE MISTAKE! And Application names does not need to be english. They just need to be good ones. The english is not anykind universal language what you can speak like on Sci-Fi movies/series that every alien understands you. We could as well even use words from Klingon as application names if we want to follow the translation possibilities or logic only to use english in apps name.
Sorry, I was refering to my comment above. The application name (as in executable) can be the same, but the alternative name that is now used in Kickoff (for "Amarok" that is "Audio player" at the moment) that should be well translated and tagged and maybe even enhanced by different things, like "Music player" for Amarok.
And those names should be discoverable in KRunner. So searching for "Music player" will give me Amarok instead of nothing. PS. Stop yelling.
Well, i don't know about you, but I use the SVN packages from opensuse, and if i hit up Alt+F2 and type Music, i get Amarok, Juk and sound config options, along with a switch to desktop 4 (music), which is where i keep my amarok window.
so this does work nicely for me. Also, if i were new to this, and (somehow) found the runner dialog, i could type in pdf, and okular would appear. so the runner part works a charm for me in that regards.
"So it's impossible to use the name correctly at the beginning of a sentence, while at the same time being grammatically correct."
It is grammatically 100% correct to start sentence with "DigiKam..." It is not wrong anyway. Those are rules of the language spellings anyway. And they make it easy to read. The software name should not be forced to use only english names (English is second most speaked language, but it is not a universal truth that it should always be used. Any other language goes just as fine. Only those who someway "loves" english, nitpicks about that) or have a same rules applied as you have for language spelling. The software name is a brand. The software has a own logo and own font and own way to type the name. It does not make it wrong anyway. Example iPhoto, iPod and iTunes. They are totally correct names, even that you need to start them with capitalized letter when in start of sentence. DigiKam is a application what has good name but still little touch about personality. If it would get changed to "Digikam" it would come boring. I do not know what is wrong about people to want every software to have identical names or meanings. Adobe registered first the "Photoshop" as their software name. Even that it is very typical word by english. Microsoft registered "Microsoft Windows" and "Microsoft Office" because they could not register "Windows" or "Office". Few years ago they even tried to register the "Windows" again and gain a ownage for that. But it was overruled because the name exist and has meaning other than Microsoft Windows. Amarok was as well fine as amaroK. But seems it got changed because, again, people was afraid being personal and building own identify for brand. If we want to go to the business, we need to understand that every software needs to have a personal brand. That means we need to have nice logos, fonts and image for that brand. Long time ago (well, few years) there was this great thing among KDE and GNOME. You could see right away from their names that which environment it "belong". Now it is not possible and it causes lots of problems even among pros who have never heard the application. They need to read descreption of application or even a depencies when they install it to find out does it need GTK+ or KDE/Qt libraries. Many has wanted the digiKam to came as Digicam. Needles to say that those are typical americans who do not even understand the branding. Same kind people wants that OpenOffice.org would be changed to Open Office. It is a OpenOffice.org and that's it. You can write it as OpenOffice.org or OOo or OO.o. We have hundreds of languages and they different a lot or just a littlebit when compared to each other. But usually one thing is typical for most languages. You can use it to explain things well. Problem is just that people does not anymore care about their own language but tries to focus only for english. I do not care how well my english is. It is not even third what I can write/speak etc. All what I mostly care is my own language and how I use it. Of course I try to avoid big spelling mistakes with any language I use but if I do mistakes what I do not notice, it is not a shame. Question is, is there somekind rule what is not mentioned anywhere, that every software should have a name what is so boring or neutral as possible? Lotus Symphony, StarOffice, KOffice are much better names for Office software than "Office" (how the Microsoft Office is usually just mentioned). GIMP, Krita and even Paintshop Pro are much better names than Adobe Photoshop. Kopete and Skype are much better than Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger names. Have you not noticed the problem what comes when everyone tries to get neutral name for their software? GNOME calls their gnome-terminal program as "Terminal". Same is called the KDE CS's Konsole. But to get open the "Terminal" what is used on GNOME, you need to know exactly the name if the program. And then comes this one very big problem with localisation. They do not even think about that there are other languages than ENGLISH. Have you seen normal user trying to open gnome-terminal from Alt+F2 when you use GNOME German, Finnish, Sweden or any other language? They type there "Terminal" and nothing happens. The KRunner does at leat that right it finds the correct applition from menu. But it is not possible from CLI. And norma user does not reconize the application from KRunner if it does not have the same icon. We all have usually three names, first, second and surname. Some people even has three names and surname. Some people gets called in US as "Jr" and so on. We have different names so we can reconize each other and know easily who is speaking from who. Thats why some cultures still have the way to call people "Name, son of name". I can not see any reason to switch the digiKam to be as Digikam. It is their brand and I like when people has enough courage to be personal and build own identify/brand. But everything is fine as long as most starts copying each others idea. Like "m8" (Mate) or "cub4" (See You Before) kinds on everywhere. The leet talk. But I find it nice to have a brand as "4 You" for jeans. And on normal speaking, we should really even try to use the correct words and not anykind shor versions like "AFAIK, IMO, IMHO, LOL, ROFL" etc. The shortenings loose meanings and makes the discussion harder. It makes the language poorer because person has no ideas how to use it. Thats why poetry is very important class in the schools because you learn how to use the language. You learn the meaning of the word and how it is different from same kind.
I think Skrooge is a good name, and not only because I use it as a nickname since C64 times, but also because nearly everyone knows the christmas carol of Charles Dickens.
I don't. Is it that popular in the US? I'm german and have no clear idea who Charles Dickens is. And who is Skrooge?
Well, I'm German as well. I honestly hope your kidding when you say you have no idea who Dickens is? Does Oliver Twist ring a bell? It's sad you missed the christmas carol. The protagonist is Ebenezer Scrooge, characterised as being particularly greedy and stingy. You should read it. You've probably seen plenty movie adaptations though, e.g. 'Die Geister, die ich rief".
By the way, the original name of the German "Dagobert Duck" is "Uncle Scrooge".
Assume much you do, little padawan.
I knew Scrooge although, but I am a old fart that reads a lot and has interest in American culture. Most people in my country have no clue what Scrooge is supposed to be PERIOD.
People in your country don't know Donald Duck?
When I see Skrooge, my first thought is 'Scrooge McDuck', which is Donald Duck's rich uncle, living in his money bin on top of Killmotorhill in Duckburg, Calisota.
Sune, see my comment above. That's because of the stupid habit of translating everything, even names. He's called "Dagobert Duck" or "Onkel Dagobert" in the German tales. Don't ask me where that came from.
Why is it stupid to translate the name of a comic figure?
Intentionally these comics were created for children so it should be easy for them to remember that name. That Mc Scrooge-thingy for sure is not. Just go and read the characters, they got translated for most languages and imo that was a good idea. And I'm not even talking about languages that have different symbols than the euro-centric ones
I said that the habit of translating everything is bad, nothing else. Mentioning "Languages that have different symbols than the euro-centric" is misleading and irrelevant here, because we're talking about a translation from English to German. Kids have absolutely no problem memorising words from other languages, by the way, and "Dagobert" is not an easy word either.
Ok, so you mean translating it to Italian, Swedish etc. was a bad idea and rather suggest the kids there to live with that Scrooge part, or worse with "Gladstone Gander", or "Gus Goose", or "Huey, Dewey, and Louie" come on ...
Okay, I give in. If it's listed in the start menu as "Skrooge - Personal Finance Manager" the function should be clear, though. I still think people can memorize it, because it's quite unique. And if they look it up, perhaps they will smile at it and remember it even better. Just like the double pun of NERO - Burning ROM. At least it worked with me. I'm not in any way affiliated with the development team by the way.
I'm aware that "rekonq" is not a good name for an application with our target audience.
But we are really young and playground software, so I think we have yet time to fix also this The real problem here is that we had not found yet a satisfating name for. Just that.
That's good to hear, thanks
BTW, I've just built Rekonq here, it's a nice app, GUI made a good first impression. Just a bit sad that mainline master depends on KDE 4.4. So I had to use the 0.3 branch, as I have Qt 4.6 here, but not KDE trunk. I'm not sure what your plans are for Rekonq (moving into KDE proper?), but maybe making it an independent application (extragear style) could be an idea worth discussing. Well, your choice
Imho Extragear is the right place for rekonq, as it does not have to "obey" the release schedule of the KDE SC.
Imo this whole discussion is ignorant. There are so many languages around, so the focus on descriptive program names works only if you also translated the application names. That might work for comic characters as the audience is large enough and there it is just about printed names but in our case with such a small audience it might be a bad idea and lead to lots of problems.
Just think about the people who do not know English and do not use the latin alphabet. Yeah "Plasma", or "Phonon" will help them ... NOT. Yes that is why I think this discussion is ignorant and even arrogant. There is more than just English or European languages! Imo the initial blog post also ignored how a brand is built. Ignoring "obvious" tasks like "Music Player" or "Video Player" that have analogies in the real world anything computer related can feel like something totally new or something distant and it simply takes a while to create the brand, but you have to start from somewhere. And in general I do not really see a problem with the current names, yeah less "K"s might be nice or not, but the most important part is that application names don't really matter, at least not in the KDE world [1]. If you open Kickoff you are not greeted with application names, but rather the functionality, while the program name is in a smaller font and in grey. The advantage of this is that the important part -- what this thing does -- can be translated into any language while the unimportant and untranslateable part [2] is still there. [1] In Windows they do unfortunately and there even the creator of the applications matters --> "Damn, who created Nero?". [2] I think that hardly anyone cares about the names of the programs, or do you have wondered what the adressbook or the application to change the sound volume is called?
I have to say this borders on linguistic myopia and a touch of
ethnocentrism. Amarok is the exception the proves the rule. As is Ubuntu and countless other pieces of great software or collections of software that choose to legitimately establish a brand using a name that is distinct and unique - that also happens to be a name from non-English language. Too many cultures and languages are dying all over the world for us to use one more excuse to push them over the edge. I was personally inspired by the choice of Amarok for a music player name. And it is great to see similar choices being made elsewhere. So it makes English speakers mildly perplexed at first glance. The fact is this is part and parcel of the branding exercise. Distinct, unique names are memorable precisely for the fact that they are distinct and unique. That it exposes myopic English speakers one word from a different culture is, to me, good gravy. I have always thought that arguments about so-called "weird" free software names are mostly bogus. K-whatever is a bad name because it starts with k, but no-one complains about g-blah or i-blah. It is a tradeoff. The more generic you make your app name the less distinct it becomes, but perhaps the easier it is to grasp what it does at first glance - and the more you have reconcile trademark conflicts. The more unique and distinct the name, the more memorable, but perhaps the less clear it is what the app does at first glance. Finding the right balance is none trivial, I agree. Can we do a better job trying to find that balance? Yes, probably. Could we use a little extra common sense to avoid the comedic tripwire of phonetic obscenities? Yeah, but I wouldn't go overboard - there are juveniles of every linguistic stripe - I'm not inclined turn my entire branding strategy on a dime for them. But I find product naming rationalizations about "correct" usage in English, itself a mutt language - a grotesquely inconsistent one at that - a little empty. Don't take this comment the wrong way Mark. I'm not mad at you for making this post. It makes for good discussion, so thanks! Peace and much respect.
Also choose a name that its possible to Google for. I use a window manager called "awesome". Any user is guaranteed to need help with it when customising their config. "awesome" is a rather difficult term to meaningfully search for...
Concerning Rekonq:
As was mentioned on your blog before (too many options being a bad excuse for bad implementations): The bad name kind of derives from a bad technical implementation: Failing to merge Rekonq's advancements in browser technology into Konqueror proper. Just put some effort into it to make the webkit part better than the khtml part so it can become the default. Getting in advancements which are not so much khtml/webkit related should be a no-brainer. Otherwise, if Project Silk people or someone else decide to do this work, Konqueror-webkit and Rekonq will duplicate efforts for no reason in the end. They should not lose the will to bring their work back into mainline. Then the name should be no more relevant than that of a branch in a versioning system for trying out new things, and the well-known name Konqueror could be reused.
@anon
"Failing to merge Rekonq's advancements in browser technology into Konqueror proper. " What advancements ? UI re-design ? When you see how some people criticized the drop of the menubar, you understand why Rekonq can't be currently merged in Konqueror. "Just put some effort into it to make the webkit part better than the khtml part so it can become the default." Current Rekonq git uses webkitkde and contributes to it. Your comment limits inovation.
Let's just throw out all names and just use symbols, like the singer Prince ahem "Love Symbol".
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