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Ross Henderson
Ross Henderson

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How do you name your projects/products?

So I'm just wondering how you all name your projects/products that you create. I've had an idea for a project but I feel that it's missing a catchy name and it has demotivated me quite a bit!

So how do you guys do it?

Top comments (4)

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leob profile image
leob • Edited

Well, I recently made a little tool for testing APIs and I called it ... (drumroll please) ... "api-tester" !

I mean, who says you need to give it a fancy name? At least it's immediately clear what it does (more or less).

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ahferroin7 profile image
Austin S. Hemmelgarn

For internal/personal stuff that will never be published, I just give it a generic but descriptive name.

For stuff I actually intend to publish, if the intenral approach results in a name that appears to be unique enough to not cause any confusion, I just use it. Otherwise, I come up with some word or phrase that seems to fit the project, and then try to find a linguistic permutation of that that I like (IOW, try the same word or phrase in other languages, try it with various synonyms, etc).

In most cases though, I use a temporary name based on the internal approach until I actually get to the point that the project is most of the way done.

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mjsarfatti profile image
Manuele J Sarfatti

IMO, it’s almost an art. If it’s a public facing project I try to step into the shoes of someone stumbling on the website for the first time. I’ll also spend a little time researching how similar apps have been named. I usually try not to be too obvious, nor too smart.

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scottishross profile image
Ross Henderson

That's what it was when I started! But considering I couldn't name it something that excited me, that's when I lost motivation for it.