Re: Principles for new name

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Inge Wallin <[email protected]> wrote:
> The time has come to choose on a new name for our software. I'm sure there
> will be lots of suggestions, some good, some, eh, maybe not optimal. :-)
>
> Before we start throwing out suggestions for names, I thought it would be
> useful to discuss a little about what we want to achieve. Here is my personal
> view; please add more input.
>
> What we are creating now is something that will last a long time. A man
> teaching me about the advertising industry once said "A new trademark is
> completely empty. It almost doesn't matter what it is, but it should be simple
> and easy to remember. The real value comes from what you put into it." This
> means that whatever name we come up with will eventually be as good as any
> other, but it should still follow a few principles. The two below are based in
> science, the rest are my opinion.
>
> 1. It should sound friendly.  I think we in the KDE community is a bit unlucky
> here, because K is a very hard letter.  K<whatever> just has a slightly
> unfriendly feel to it. For instance Dolphin is a much friendlier name than
> Konqueror. Besides, the K names are not really favoured any more.
>
> 2. It turns out that companies with a name that begins in A have on average
> 50% higher revenue than other companies. This is because companies are mostly
> sorted alphabetically in lists. People often don't have the energy or
> knowledge to pick the best choice, so they just take something near the
> beginning. Perhaps we could take advantage of this and have a first letter
> near the start of the alphabet.  (Blue Office would be very good here, but
> there were other problems with that. Perhaps we could just call it A Office or
> the A Suite? :-P)
>
> 3. I think we should consider calling it <something> Suite instead of
> <something> Office.  This would make it more suitable(!) for Karbon and Krita
> since they have indicated that their users don't like them to be part of an
> office package. It would also be easier to enhance the package later with
> other applications. Maybe something like DigiKam could be part of the
> Suite(tm) sometimes in the future?  (note: this is not a suggestion, just an
> loose thought)
>
> 4. Regarding the individual applications, I think we have two choices:
>  - to call them <name> writer, <name> calc or something generic like that,
> where <name> is the name we give the entire package.
>  - to give them individual real names. A good example is the applications in
> Apple iWork: Pages, Numbers and Keynote
> I would prefer the second, but I'm not strongly in either camp.
>
> Then of course there are the other normal considerations like domain names,
> etc.
>
> But PLEASE don't suggest any "funny" names that draw chuckles on an IRC
> channel but will be dragging us down for all future to come.

So you said we should not suggest names just yet? I'm going to break
the rules, as I think that I have come up with something really nifty.

We all know what calligraphy is, right? It's the art of giving form to
written text, in a harmonious, expressive, and skillful matter. The
name stems from the Latin word "Caligatus". While office work is not
exactly that, it's a very nice analogy of what we try to achieve:
Making office work a task of beauty and harmony.

My suggestions is, as we cannot really use the word "Calligraphy" by
itself (it's too long):

"Calligra Office"


The components of Calligra Office (KWord, KSpread, etc): could become:

"Calligra Writer"
"Calligra Painter"
"Calligra Tables"
"Calligra [...]"


Advantages of this name:

1) It sounds very nice.
2) It is not yet trademarked for software, as far as I know.
3) It is related to our product.
4) The latter "C" is fairly high on top of the alphabet, providing
good marketing value.


A potential logo could look similar to this:

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_126/1172776652T32d07.jpg

-- 
Mark Kretschmann
Amarok Developer, Software Engineer at KO GmbH
Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe
http://amarok.kde.org - http://fsfe.org - http://kogmbh.com