This article will deal with the problem of finding the right name for your project. There are quite a few pitfalls that you have to take care of. For example free domains, names that can be translated in foreign languages to bad words etc.

Take your time!

From my point of view, it’s the hardest part to find a good name for the project. A funny idea that sounded great at the beginning may be problematic a few releases later when your project reaches a certain size of the user base. For example the postnuke project had problems to get accepted in the professional space. There were negative feelings that were originated in the suffix “nuke” which has been chosen to express the inheritance  of the phpnuke project from which postnuke forked. Later when the source base has been completely rewritten the “inheritance” to phpnuke  was the source of mistrust to the project from other developers and users. So the project had to rename itself to get rid of the negative connotation. A pretty popular story of the Mitsubishi Pajero which wasn’t a success in spanish speaking communities, because pajero means “to jerk-off”. After that most big companies are spending big bucks for research. In short: Take your time when choosing the name, you may regret it if you choose it lightheaded.

Low hanging fruits first: domains

When you have a name in mind, check the availability of the domains in the important top level domains like .org, .com and the local domains like .de. They are important when your user base grows and local support groups are forming. It’s pretty annoying/confusing for you users if they can’t access the local support page by urls like http://www.myProject.de. People often work around by using pre- or suffixes like “-support”, “-community” or “-hp”, but this is far from good. Even in times of google people still try to enter urls directly and when they see a different project or a bad maintained unofficial site that deals with your project, the users may switch to different projects, because they got a (wrong) bad impression. People often don’t take the time to really search for something. When the first attempt doesn’t they’ll go on and try the next project that may cover their needs. There are many tool out there where you can check the availability of domains in multiple TLDs. Most companies that offer domains with different TLDs offer a similar service. The dot-o-mator for example offers several tools to find names and the domain availabilities. So please keep in mind: Check the availability of as many domain names as possible and maybe even buy them early for the best user experience.

Naming & trademark rights – that one may be troubling…

One thing that many people don’t think of are naming and trademark rights. You might think that it’s not a big deal, who will sue an open source project… This is happening and it will happen again. For example the Eclipse project Mylyn had a different name before: Mylar. They had to rename their project because there have been some trademark issues with other products (See: Wikipedia).  But there is more that may happen. Your users may also be the reason for troubles. Postnuke has been registered as “word mark” (Wortmarke in german) in germany and the guy also registered postnuke.de. At first he offered support forums etc. but after a while there were conflicts with some of the active members which escalated in the creation of the site pncommunity.de, which later became the de facto support site for german users. But the project had no chance to get the domain from the old owner, because he had superior righty because he has registered the word postnuke. Even the formation of the german postnuke e.V. (german kind of foundation) was not enough to be able to force the old owner to give up the domain. To summarize it: If you start a serious project check the trademark and naming rights before and as son as it get’s really serious, try to register your project name in as many countries as possible.

Renaming a project

So what happens if your project is taking off and you don’t want or can’t keep the name, for example because you’re encountering one of the problems above? First thing to do is to find a new really good name and keep all the points above in mind! You don’t want to rename it twice! Register first the domains, maybe the trademark/naming rights before you’ll go public with the new name, so no one may be able to get in your way again. After that you should make an announcement where you explain that you have changed the name and if possible, even explain why you did it. But be sure to be as neutral as possible. Don’t insult people even if they tried to do your project “harm”. Then rename everything to get rid of the old name as soon as possible. It’s not trivial to rename a project and many users may be confused if you don’t communicate it not properly. Try to keep old domains and put redirects in place to lead people that don’t visit your project homepage not often to the new site. Long story short: Renaming is tricky business! There are many things that can go wrong. Plan it accurately!

Conclusion

It’s not easy to choose a good name. There are many pitfalls and potential problems that you may end up in if you don’t select the name careful.  Legal issues, mean users or simply bad choices may lead to problems and maybe even expensive cease and desist letter from a lawyer. So choose carefully young padawan!

introduction · naming · starting-phase · talk

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