tofi july 27, 2015 naming: ramakrishnan

8/20/2019 TOFI July 27, 2015 Naming: Ramakrishnan

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KARTHIK RAMAKRISHNANCO-FOUNDER, CEO



What's In A Name?

That Which We Call A Rose

By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet.

False.



EVOKE

REPRESENT

POSITION

INSPIRE

MEMORABLE



EVOC EvocativityConveys atleast a hint of what its naming

BREV Brevity Shorter = Better

GREP Greppability Not a substring of common words

GOOG Googlability Reasonably unique (and domain available

PRON Pronounceability You can read it out loud when you see it

SPEL Spellability You know how its spelled when you hear it

VERB Verbability The name (or variant) can be used as a ver



Evocativity

Ideally the name conveys exactly what it’s naming. That ideal i

incompatible with the rest of the criteria, so, failing that, is the name aevocative of what it’s naming?



Brevity

The shorter the better



Greppability

Shorter is better, but not so short that it’s a substring of common wo

be able to grep for it in a document, or set up a google news

If you’ve sacrificed greppability you’ve probably got something imp

but it’s probably not worth it. Consider the Arc programming l



Googlability

A name should be reasonably unique. Depending on what you migh

may also want to check that the domain name is available and che

trademarks.



Pronounceability

If there’s no way to pronounce a name other than to rattle off the

acronym, I’d call that a dealbreaker. Taking that minimum bar — noacronyms! — as a given, doing well on the pronounceability criterion

can tell how to pronounce it when you see it.



Spellability

This is less important than pronounceability but ideally anyone who

immediately knows how to spell it. Violating this is less of a problem

People seem sufficiently used to alternate spellings. And mostly theconveyed by literal word-of-mouth. You see the weird spelling and

Examples abound: google vs googol, youtube vs utube, digg vs dig

redit, stickk vs stick, wii vs wee (or we or oui).



Verbability

Not only should you be able to pronounce it but you should be able Like google and xerox. (The actual name need not be the verb; e.g.,

beeminder/beeminding.) You can often achieve verbability just by b

short and pronounceable.

tofi july 27, 2015 naming: ramakrishnan

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