Tag: names

Do you remember how the Greeks always say that eve…

Do you remember how the Greeks always say that everything originated from Greece?  Well, the other day we figured out how the name Sam came from Greece.  No, it wasn’t Samuel of any kind.  It was Aleksamdros!

Doctor ibn Engineer

I had an interesting idea today, which somehow transformed into a rather lengthy thought train, which, in turn, pushed me to browse quite a bit of Wikipedia, and, finally, to write this blog post.   It’s just one of those things that I spent some time thinking about which has no practical purpose rather then annoy and entertain readers of this blog and confusing Google into bringing in more people, searching for rather random things.

I started off with names and naming conventions.  People names, to be more precise, and how different cultures approached the naming.  Remember, those Arabic names that trace the ancestry of a person using the “ibn” word,  which means the “son of”.  Abdul ibn Hasan ibn Abdurahman ibn Foo ibn Blah ibn .. it can go for ever.  No, remember those surnames based on the profession of a person, used by many cultures.  Baker, Fisher, Hunter, Miller, Parker, and so on.

Wouldn’t it be fun to see these two paradigms mixed up.  We’d still use “ibn” to indicate the “son of” part.  But instead of meaningless father’s name we’d use father’s profession.  In conjunction with the regular first name and last name that could give some really awesome names.  For example, my son could have been Maxim ibn Programmer ibn Engineer ibn Projectionist Mamchenkov.  How cool is that? For a change, most people’s full names would be interesting.  The downside?  Those families with the same profession running through generation would be really boring.  But they would still have something to feel proud about.  John ibn Doctor ibn Doctor ibn Doctor ibn Doctor ibn Doctor Healer.  I’d be more than willing to trust my health into his capable hands!

What would your name be like?

Fedora 17 is a Beefy Miracle

The community has voted on the name for the next release of Fedora Linux. The name ‘Beefy Miracle‘ has won the voting race. It got most of the votes despite all the noise and protests from the ‘serious’ people. Personally, I am in favor of this name for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I don’t see Fedora as a ‘serious’ distribution. Not in the enterprise kind of way. It is a bleeding edge Open Source project which is supposed to be fun. And it is. So, nothing wrong with a funny name.

Secondly, for those who do promote Fedora in the enterprise environments, there is really no need to use the name. They can still reference the release by number. And Fedora Linux 17 sounds strict and official.

Thirdly, through the history of all Fedora releases, there were just a few names that I actually understood and could remember. ‘Beefy Miracle’ is easy to remember.

Fourthly, there were too much hype of different vegetarian cultures recently. I have nothing against that. But as a huge fan of meats, I’m glad to see any kind of meat promotion. Be that beefy or porky – I don’t mind at all.

Fifly, c’mon people – it’s just a name. It’s not a project or person name. It’s a release name. No matter what it is, in a year or so it will fade away. Like all the others did. Seriously, who can still remember Heidelberg, or Stentz, or even Laughlin?