[bengoodger]

Product naming can be ridiculously hard. Even if you have something you personally think is clever, everyone else can think you're a dork.

Related anecdotes:

When trying to come up with a name for Firefox (after having two other names rejected due to trademark snafus), a friend of mine sarcastically rattled off a bunch of alternatives using the same prefix as the outgoing "Firebird" on IRC one night. I think it was "Firecrap, Fireturd, Firefox". I stopped him. The consonance was great, and the team loved the name. The rest is history.

At the beginning of Chrome, we had to come up with a project name. Inspired how Netscape did their project naming, we did a vote. The results were truly awful. I think "Goose" was the winner. At this point Linus came in and put us out of our misery, "How about Chrome... it's kind of ironic given the UI design." Everyone agreed that it was much better. That was before we'd written really any code, so it stuck for the entire project. Shortly before launch the marketing folk did a brief exploration, but we threw up all over their suggestions, and Chrome stuck.

[nacker]

I had been a Phoenix user for several months when I heard it had run into problems with the name. When I heard it was going to be called Firefox, I thought it was the most ridiculous name I'd ever heard! Funny, now I really like it.

When I first heard the name Barack, though... http://rense.com/general84/brck.htm

[g8oz]

Sincerely hope you posted that link in jest

[nacker]

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. - Sigmund Freud