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by jef_leppard 1391 days ago
Someone recently observed that SQLite would be used a lot more in production if it didn't have the word "lite" in its name. I've personally been amazed by what it can do. Really great piece of tech with an unfortunate name.
8 comments

The name SQLite isn't Sequel-lite. It's S.Q.L.-ite akin to graphite or Levite. It means a thing of SQLy stuff.

The creator says it like Escue Ell-ite emphasis on the Es- and -ite. [0]

https://youtu.be/Jib2AmRb_rk?t=99

That may be so. But just because someone is the creator doesn't mean they have control over how people use the name.

Case in point:

Blue Origin wants people to refer to it by the nickname "Blue". But you kind of have to be in the industry to know that. Everyone else just uses the initialism instead, which is most commonly used to abbreviate "body odor".

TIL, but strange choice.

On a related topic, anyone have an idea of the breakdown of people that say Sequel vs S.Q.L. and are there people that look down on others for their usage? Of course ignoring the opinion of anyone that says Jif.

I have heard that Windows users (or those more influenced by SQL Server) say "sequel" whereas Unix users (or those more influenced by Postgres) say "SQL". Think of how bad "Postgresequel" sounds in comparison to "Postgr-es cue ell". But what about other environments, I don't know.
Yes but you don't get the namer's intent beamed into your brain when you see or hear a word for the first time. To me and a lot of other people it's pretty clearly sql-lite regardless of what the namer wants it to be. Maybe this makes me stupid or whatever but when naming things you also have to account for my stupidity because I share it with a lot of other people.
This is exactly the reason the Nimrod language was renamed to Nim.
I would be funny if they suddenly rebranded to "MegaSQL" :)
SQLheavy
SQLAwesome? :)
SQLit!
sql.io
Nah, this time zoomers win. SQLit > sql.io
SQLitio
$ lsof -u `whoami` | grep '[.]db$' | less

The macbook I'm typing this on has 113 sqlite databases open right now. I'd call that a lot of deployment. The name doesn't seem to have held sqlite back much!

Not so unfortunate according to Socrates: 'the hardest task needs the lightest hand..' ;-)
If it had a better name it might surpass zlib and be the #1 deployed library in existence instead of just #2.
Why dilute your community with people who don't do the reading?
Maybe someday it’ll be rebranded as SQLFile or SQLPhile instead.
To blame unconscious bias over a suffix as a non-trivial force on adoption is silly when there are plenty of valid technical constraints for adoption of SQLite in many projects.

IMO database names are incredibly bland, outside of Cockroachdb, and not a driving factor to adoption given the critical nature of the decision.