Am I the only one who laments this trend of using a common first name as a product name? When I see this, my first reaction is that the company lacks any empathy for people who have the name they're co-opting.
Not sure about the “rude” part. It really depends on the person. But yes, it can get annoying rally fast. Therefore “shitty” indeed. But yeah, I do think it is very cheezy and lazy when companies do this. When I talked to someone that worked there, I guess it was because of the hard constant “X” -it would make a better Hollywood movie if they said Artificial. Language. Expanded. Xenomorphic. Amplified. A. L. E. X. A.
Devin comes from "dev in chat", a common phrase in livestream chat rooms to signal that the developer of the game or product being showcased was present.
The short version of my name is one letter away from "Alexa". You can imagine how many comments and jokes about Amazon's AI assistant I've been party to for the past decade. Although it may be hard for you to believe I actually don't really care, much as you probably don't care about the hot dogs bearing your name that you see when you walk down the cold aisle in the grocery store. Should they instead call the anthropomorphized AI assistant something like "W'rkncacnter" to preclude the possibility of name collisions (chaotic entities imprisoned in alien stars notwithstanding)?
My Japanese mom always thought it was weird to put peoples names to destructive forces like hurricanes. I think she said in Japan use some numbering system (might be as simple as incrementing, I don't remember).
The US did this for a long time -- only numbering storms. In 1953 they switched to a list of names, female only. Then 25 years later to male and female names. It is kinda weird, and if they're destructive enough the name is retired. I think the idea is that people would pay more attention to human names in the warning process as the hurricanes approach land.
When I was 7, my family's Japanese foreign exchange student was being introduced to me.
She bursted out laughing saying my nick name Dev Dev sounded like "fart fart" or "fat fart".
Had the nickname fart fart until my sister moved out of the house.
Maybe you could confirm, but ChatGPT tells me in Japanese Debu colloquially and offensively means "fat" or "chubby", and Bu is an onomotapoeia for a fart noise, like "prrt" in English.
It appears your name is Alex, so I'm not surprised that the Alexa product name doesn't bother you. I suspect you would feel different if your name was Alexa. If the product was named Nate, it would bother me. There are plethora of other options for product names that companies can use besides common first names.
I think it's different when the product is an tool you call by name to use vs just the name of the tool. E.g. the article is about "Alexa" and I'm not sure most people even realize there are ways to use it without saying "Hey Alexa" every time. Without that type of callback association it's not a very serious concern.
I don't care about it potentially being a real name, because I doubt it would be a household item, but somehow the name itself for this particular product seems offputting.
If it had to be a name for a product, it seems like to give me some sort of cheap male grooming or AXE body spray product vibes.