What's in a name?

Have you ever had a problem naming a project? Some projects are simple and easy to name, the name is obvious yet sometimes a bit clinical. But some projects come along and you don't want some thing simple. You'd rather have an elegant name, that gave a sense of interest to your project. Take Darkstar for instance. Personally I think it's a pretty cool name. But the official title is SGS, Sun Gaming Server. Yeah, that's a bit dry.

So here I sit getting ready to start a new project and I need a name for it. At first I think about what my project will do. It's a game framework. It works within Darkstar. I want it to be powerful, easy to use, and extensible. Besides just being an internal company project, I'd like for it to be an open source project as well, at least part of it. So what do I choose for a name?

I asked some of my coworkers and we sat around coming up with names. Some were silly, some were serious, some were corny, and some still make me giggle. I still don't know if any of them just scream cool or have that wow factor. So what is a guy to do? For many writers a thesaurus is a handy helper, but I figured I could do one better so I hit Google Sets. If you haven't played with it you should check it out. It's been in Google labs forever. You basically give it a list of words or phrases and it asks the all knowing internet for similar words or phrases. It's like a thesaurus on steroids. Put in "first" and "second" and it will give you "third". Any set of things and it will try it's best to give you some more similar things.

So here I sit, with words and phrases gleaned from the 'net and I still don't have a name for my project yet. Sometimes I think naming is the hardest part, and if I can just pick one the rest of the project will be so much easier. Maybe I should just pick the first word that comes to mind . . . .

hmmm . . . somehow "Project Crouton" just doesn't inspire me at the moment.