[Mageia-discuss] origin of the name "mageia"?

[Maarten Vanraes]

Op maandag 20 september 2010 21:42:39 schreef Michael Scherer:
> Le lundi 20 septembre 2010 à 17:30 +0100, Maurice Batey a écrit :
> > I must have missed some posting that explains "mageia"!
> > 
> > What is the origin of this name, please?
> 
> There was some peoples ( primarily people at the origin of the fork )
> who proposed some names ( I estimated to 40/50 proposal ), and then we
> removed all that were not suitable :
> 
> - already used on .org domain name ( nebula, for example )
> 
> - unsuitable because it was too funny and not professional, ie mostly
> private joke in French ( tartopom, for example ).
> 
> - trademarked by checking inpi.fr for the various class of use we wanted
> ( ie, while having a name trademarked for wine was not a issue, a name
> used in book edition could have been ), for example, toucan was
> proposed, but this is trademarked in France.
> 
> - trademarked in the rest of the world.
> 
> - already used by a old linux distribution, ( diamond linux )
> 
> - too similar to some big name in computing field ( ubun3 )
> 
> - already used by another software or company ( nexodus ) without being
> trademarked
> 
> - already used by people who could have enough money to sue ( mango )
> even in a different domain
> 
> - unsuitable and seen as offensive in languages we check ( of course,
> with 6900 languages on the planet, chances are high that every possible
> name can be funny for at least one person, but problem is when there is
> a lot more than one ), for example mirably ( too similar to miserably )
> 
> - not refused by ennael ( as I proposed ennalinux :)  )
> 
> - not too similar to Mandriva stuff ( some people proposed BlueBird,
> which I liked a lot, except this was the codename of Mandrake 8.2, and
> traktopel, which was 8.0 )
> 
> - not too long
> 
> - implicitly, we also tried to avoid everything outside of ascii ( even
> if some people proposed a chinese name, they will recognize
> themselves ). I say implictly because almost everything was ascii.
> 
> We also tried to get a name which could be used for design ( ie, we try
> to avoid turd linux ), with name not already taken everywhere, with .com
> availiable, and with a possible good catch phrase but we had to relax
> theses checks, as the twitter account was not available, and as the .com
> domain name was already taken ( but that's not a issue, IMHO ). And I
> think no one thought of the design/catchphrase stuff in the last run.
> 
> And so basically, after removing more than 95% of the various proposals,
> only 2 names survived after the selection. And we voted to keep one
> ( and no, I will keep the other one secret ).
> 
> Of course, this explanation is less sexy than the other one about "this
> come from greek", which are true too, but I want to highlight that
> choosing a name is neither easy or as fun as it sound. And that we
> didn't start by saying "wow, greek is a cool language, let's find a word
> from it".


This is an amazing explanation, and something that a lot of people could 
benefit from reading.

I knew that it's not an easy task to get a name, and with explaning this 
process, i can only imagine the fun you guys musta had when brainstorming for 
a name

"ubun3", "turd linux", ...

thanks for the good explanation.