[antirez]

We should be very happy that somebody invented the "NoSQL" name. Once things have a name people can start to talk about this things, and the ideas will move faster.

This recent hype about the NoSQL stuff was only possible because there was a name :)

[mikeryan]

This reminds me of when the term AJAX was introduced. I thought it was a stupid attempt to foist a "cool" name on an already existing term.

Yet it may be coincidental but that seemed to coincide with the time that using an XMLHTTPRequest took off.

Maybe the branding worked?

[dnene]

The NoSQL hype happened because people wanted to explore and promote alternatives. The NoSQL name happened since there was a need to provide a moniker to the alternatives. Since this was a hype and movement based on otherwise real need, it is likely to have happened even if the name was something completely different say FreeQL (or whatever other catchy name). The post isn't arguing there shouldn't be a name. All it is attempting to point out is that it should be a meaningful and appropriate name - else what you think (when you hear the name) and what you get (when you actually dig into the details) are very different. The current name actually makes it harder for newer participants to properly grok these storage systems - which wasn't perhaps the goal in the first place.

[antirez]

Yes indeed, I totally agree that there is a feedback. Something starts to be interesting, then people start to talk about this thing and it's comfortable to name it in some way. Then some name will arise and the discussion will move even faster. Eventually the field gets names for every important concept, and so on...

Still there is something "magic" in this process. Once you get a name for one thing, it starts to get much more obvious. For instance think at the "web 2.0" or "Ajax" cases. NoSQL, in the name itself, is the negation of something else, and this allowed to collect a number of different projects under this name.