how to choose a name (in tech)

tl;dr: naming a thing well, is an opportunity to help a thing succeed. naming a thing anything less than well, is like cursing a thing.

in short, make your name distinct, make it simple, make it concise.

distinct

a good name makes it easy to distinguish between a thing and the things it is similar to. a common misconception in tech is that things should be named in a way that highlights the things it is similar to. this is unfortunate because what it actually does is create confusion between similar things. names are chosen once by a few people. the confusion they can cause is experienced many times by many people.

simple

names should be easy to spell and to pronounce based on their spelling. trust me. my surname is thijssen. i can count on my fingers the people in my life who have known how to say my name after seeing it in writing or spell it after hearing it. many of them are people i am related to. easy to spell and pronounce is infinitely preferable in a multicultural setting.

concise

in tech, the name of a thing gets concatenated with other things. if you name your thing the-thing-that-does-this-other-thing, it gets really unwieldy the first time someone concatenates it with another-thing-that-does-another-thing. if possible, use single barelled names for anything that might get concatenated with another thing. if you don't want to concern yourself with things that might happen, just assume they will and stick with single barelling for everything.