Re: USAGE: (Mis)Naming a Language

On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 10:50:04PM -0500, Herman Miller wrote:
> Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>
> >These days, googling before settling on a particular name will eliminate a
> >lot of the potential conflicts. In this case I endorse your suggestion of
> >changing the spelling, if possible, since David is bothered by it.
[...]

Searching for "Ebisedian" yields 3 pages of hits, mainly with relay
entries and CONLANG archives. No conflicting pages, but unfortunately
it doesn't turn up the "real" Ebisédian page. (Probably because my
earlier mentions of Ebisédian lacks the acute on the second /e/.)
Happily, searching for "Ebisédian" does turn up the main Ebisédian
page. So far, the name Ebisédian or Ebisedian seems to be pretty
unique. (Yay! :-P)

Searching for "Tamahi" turns up lots of pages about gold and
alchemical minerals. Apparently "tamahi gold" refers to some mineral
forms. Only a few interspersed entries that refer to CONLANG archives
where I mentioned Tamahi. Searching for Tamahí doesn't help;
apparently Google treats /i/ the same as /í/ (beats me why /e/ and /é/
are different despite this). I don't even know if the "real" Tamahí
page appears anywhere; the "tamahi gold" pages completely overwhelm
the results.

Searching for "Tatari Faran" (in quotes) turns up the few posts on
CONLANG where I sketched the lang. Searching without the quotes turns
up one more page, belonging to some lawyer firm in Karachi. Apparently
"Tatari" is a last name, and "Faran" is the name of a hotel.
Interesting.

In any case, I fully sympathize with David's dilemma, having gone
through a similar thing in the area of computer programming. I started
working on a simple text-based todo-list manager (yes I know, I am a
wheel reinventor), and came up with the neat name "2do". However, I
did not make the program public for the many intervening years during
which the project was on the backburner. When I revived the project
and finally got it to a useful point, I discovered to my dismay that
somebody else had written a GUI-based todo-list manager with the same
name. By that time, I had grown really attached to the name "2do".

So I was faced with a dilemma: either to stake my claim at coming up
with the name first, or to change the name. The problem with the
former option is that my program was never published before the other
person's, so my claim would be on shaky ground. (Anyone could claim
they invented something before you did, especially if nobody else knew
about it when they did it.) So I was faced with the undesirable option
of renaming my program. The problem with the name was, in my analysis,
due to two things: (1) the domain of todo-list managers is a
particularly prolific one, and it was almost inevitable that sooner or
later, somebody would come up with a conflicting name. (2) The name
wasn't unique enough: there are only so many variations on "todo", and
sooner or later, a conflict would be inevitable. So I decided that, if
I was going to change the name, it must be something so unique that it
would be very unlikely anyone else would've come up with it.

My final choice was to rename my program to "yawn" - i.e., when I was
bored (yaawwn), it would remind me of what else I haven't done yet.
The filter language I used for it was renamed from SFL (Simple Filter
Language - another non-unique generic name only too likely to conflict
with something else) to "snore", the companion of "yawn". These are
common words, but I believe they are quite unique in the world of
todo-list managers, so I expect that they would remain mine. (The
choice of these particular names was also in part due to my reaction
of slapping dilemma with sarcastic humour.) Since the days of this
Great Renaming, I've come to like the humorous name, and use the
program to great utility even every day. The only thing missing is a
webpage to assert my claim to the names to Google, before the next
name collision comes along (arggghhh ... ).


T

--
It is widely believed that reinventing the wheel is a waste of time;
but I disagree: without wheel reinventers, we would be still be stuck
with wooden horse-cart wheels.