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Comment by stackghost

4 hours ago

Open source continues its streak of picking atrocious names. Just off the top of my head, in recent memory we have Raku, Kodi, Luanti, Valkey, and now Nura.

Naming things is famously hard, but sometimes it feels like the Good Idea Fairy visits these projects and they aren't product-savvy enough to realize that humans are social, fickle creatures. You need to pick a name that your users won't be embarassed to say in a board room. There is a fairly sizable body of research-backed evidence that picking a cringe name reduces initial trust/comprehension.

Lukewarm take: "I'm a Raku developer" makes one sound like someone with poor hygiene who watches far too much anime.

Edit: also “floorp” the Firefox fork and “xonaly” the search engine. Who could forget those gems.