How to name something

Start the fun.

First, start with a pun - these are the richest vessels for helping one escape the fact that naming things is hard, it’s going to be dumb anyways, so you might as well be as reductivist as possible, and go for the lowest barrier to entry to humour.

This would be a great place for an example of something that I’ve got to name, but I can’t think of anything at the moment, so please pretend like I’ve put a description in here of a system that we have to name.

Update: I asked Gemini to give me an example system that needs naming:

“The contextual event orchestrator” - it is a middle layer service for ecommerce that watches what the user does (via web events) and decides if it needs to intervene.

Puns work best if they are in a phrase or a common saying. This will help you establish a connection to the sytem - here, our example is watching the user, and interveneing with the contextually correct thing. These are rife for attaching meaning to our name by using a familiar phrase that might describe something along the same lines.

https://pungenerator.org/ <- the greatest website ever.

Eghhh that’s a little rough looking so far, let’s try something else.

Anologous things

What are some other systems that watch things and respond? Security guards, they watch shoppers and intervene when they’ve stolen. Our thing is maybe a little more general purpose, but there’s something … creepy or over-sighty about our example system.

The Watchmen are an avenue to explore in this realm - they’re a) a fantastic book, and b) kinda in the geek culture, but, the show might be a little too violent or “real” to be a soft enough joke to land in an office. We’re going for “acceptable” not “rejected”, and that means we’ve got to toe the line enough to be cheeky, but not enough to be interpretted as intimidating or violent.

Okay - so what else watches and responds? bumpers, in a pinball machine, they kinda watch for the ball and then respond by pushing the ball into other parts of a pinball machine, okay that’s not such a bad analogy - there’s a bit of a joke in there about throwing the user as chaotically as a pinball from one experience to the next when they hit the right thing.

That joke also does us the favour of kind of baking the warning into the system for others to know about too, that’s great! We can impart how to not use the thing into the name! Don’t ruin people’s experience by tossing them around like a pinball.

Bumper alone might not be enough, since it’s the tie to pinball that imparts the meaning (on it’s own bumper kinda means car part to me, although that even works in a bit of a funny way too). So is there a way we can refer to the user and the bumper at the same time…

The “User bumper” makes me think something along the lines of “mosh pit” - not a bad way to continue the anology, okay. What about “user thumper” that’s kinda funny but loses the meaning a bit. what about “granny bumper” granny’s are the funniest computer users:

Keeping in this vein - we could antagonize the meaning a bit more - it could be the “party pooper” as in, the users’s just partying and we’re there to ruin their time with our contextually correct thing. Like the character from family guy who had the story about a bridge. But maybe we’re actually being helpful with our service, let’s stay away from that.

Rhyming

What about a rhyme - that really helps with mnemonics, folks have an easier time remembering things that rhyme.

This lesson is burned into my brain the first time I noticed that I remember rhymes really well was when my dad took me to Ottawa and I got to watch the parliament question period. One MP kept saying “It’s a fudge it budget!”. “What a shitty rhyme” I thought, but then after he said it like 5 times, it really stuck, and I’ll probably remember that until my dying day that terrible phrase.

https://www.rhymezone.com/ <- another fantastic site

2 syllables: clumper, compear, dumper, frumper, humper, jumper, lumper, mumper, plumper, pumper, rumper, stumper, thumper, trumper

3 syllables: cliffjumper, pole jumper, queue-jumper, showjumper, ski jumper, smokejumper, tub-thumper, tubthumper

4 syllables: bible-thumper, counterjumper

5 syllables: bumper-to-bumper, parachute jumper

Out of that list I like stumper - is there something to that that we could use? The “user stumper”. I like how it kind of means stop in your tracks, there’s implied thinking, too like the user is going to be totally stumped when they read this contextually relevant thing!

Trying to veer back to the example, who is someone who orchestrates stumping? Maybe a teacher? like they have a class of students and they stump them continually? The system probably works in a stump, then decide/orchestrate kinda manner, so this line of thinking might need a bit more finess to add that deeper layer of meaning, so let’s look around for some more meaning that we can attach.

Coaches watch you, they interrupt and provide contextually relevant things for you to do - this is feeling like the opposite of ‘bumper’ and that’s going to give us a more optimistic entropic naming vein from which we can draw inspiration from.

“Put me in coach” - that kinda works too, from the perspective of the relevant thing to be put in front of the user, alright - I like it. Are there any rhymes or puns we can apply here?

1 syllable: broach, brooch, coche, doetsch, doe ch, goetsch, loach, noach, poach, proach, roach, roache, roche, soche

2 syllables: abroach, accroach, approach, caroche, cockroach, combbroach, encoach, encroach, incoach, mailcoach, reproach, slowcoach, stage-coach, stagecoach, turnbroach, uncoach

3 syllables: cockaroach, minicoach, motorcoach, papa roach, player-coach, reapproach, self-reproach, slumbercoach

4 syllables: german cockroach, giant cockroach, landing approach

5 syllables: australian cockroach, oriental roach

6 syllables: american cockroach, oriental cockroach

I’m on a coach is funny, coach shoes is okay, coach of arms - maybe there’s something to that, inflate-able coach is funny, Papa roach is funny… Good stuff for the inspo, but nothing’s really jumping out to me.

Coach carter is the only coach from a movie that’s coming to mind, but I’m not sure that that’s the metaphore that’s going to land well here, mostly because I’m pretty out of my element w.r.t. sports.

User coach, broach, roach, approach, apro-coach? Coach roach? coachr, coachist, coachy, coach couch? coacho … eghh none of those are feeling right.

What about dispatcher - this sounds cool and sleek, and kinda like a taxi service that responds to user’s call event with a contextually relevant taxi

What about a waiter - they kinda wait for a user order event and give delicious contextually relevant food in kind.

Dispatcher, waiter, coach, bumper are the words that I’ve collected into a bit of a short list for inspiration. Are there any other words that carry a similar meaning that works?

What about interrupting elephant? that’s a great kids joke:

Knock, Knock Who’s there? Interrupting Elephant. Interrupti…INTERRUPTING ELEPHANT (screamed loudly by child 1)

holy smokes this might be it. Let’s play with the word a bit, or see if we should use it as is.

(At this stage, I like to stay away from pun generator and rhyme zone, and just kinda trust my gut where to what to try)

interrupting elephant is a bit tough to type, can we shorten it?

intereleph

intelph

interL

intrel

Of those I think “interelph” or “intrel” are the not-bad-est? it looks like a great cli name, Our system is middle layer, so it’s probably more like a module or a package, so this one would be not a bad pitch if your team is a little techy.

These shortened versions have the benefit of the user having to ask “what does that mean” and now you get to tell them this story, and that teaches them about the service, makes it mnemonic through narrative and meaning, and teaches them a bit about the service when they hear this story and then say the name in the future.

Lastly - don’t let picking a name consume you - find something good enough, that touches on the right points that you’d like to convey, has a little bit of fun with the name while being office friendly, is memorable, give it the name and move on - you’re going to get this opportunity lots.