From: James Gosling
Date: August 24, 2007 8:16:58 PM PDT
To: Jonathan Schwartz
Subject: How was Java named?
The story goes like this:
We needed a name. We had been using
"oak" (which was selected essentially
randomly by me), and while the team
had grown attached to it, the
trademark lawyers ruled it out. We had
lots of email debates about names, but
nothing got resolved. We ended up in
the awkward position where the #1
thing stopping us from shipping was
the name.
Our marketing lead knew someone who
was a "naming consultant" (I don't
remember his name, but he was great).
We could neither afford the price nor
the time of a conventional product
naming process. He agreed to do
something rather odd, but effective
and quick: he acted as a facilitator
at a meeting where about a dozen of us
locked ourselves in a room for an
afternoon. He started asking us
questions like "How does this thing
make you feel?" (Excited!) "What else
makes you feel that way?" (Java!) We
ended up with a board covered with
essentially random words. Then he put
us through a sorting process where we
ended up with a ranking of the names.
We ended up with a dozen name
candidates and sent them off to the
lawyers: they worked down the list
until they hit one that cleared their
search. "Java" was the fourth name on
the list. The first name on the list
was "Silk", which I hated but everyone
else liked. My favorite was "Lyric",
the third one on the list, but it
didn't pass the lawyers test. I don't
remember what the other candidate
names where.
So, who named Java? Marketing
organized the meeting, the consultant
ran it, and a whole pile of us did a
lot of yelling out of random words.
I'm honestly not real sure who said
"Java" first, but I'm pretty sure it
was Mark Opperman.
There certainly wasn't any brilliant
marketing mind who went through a
coherent thought process.
-- http://blogs.oracle.com/jonathan/entry/better_is_always_different (wayback machine mirror)
