Comments on: What’s a Hulu? The Origins of 8 High-Tech Names

By: xinyun

xinyun — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:18:03 +0000

it is comparative in form and thus has the “-us” nominative ending.

By: were

were — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:45:31 +0000

it means “butt.” While these translations are accurate, http://www.crazypurchase.com the folks behind naming hulu.com were inspired by a couple of Mandarin Chinese definitions instead – “interactive recording” and “a hollowed-out gourd used to hold precious things.”

By: Zodarr

Zodarr — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:17:00 +0000

Prius in hungarian (written: priusz) means he/she has a bad record (was in jail before:))

Like the post BTW:)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:55:00 +0000

Linux is an interesting story.

Linus Torvalds originally wanted to call it “Freax.” And a lot of your early-versioned Linux source carried that name.

The FTP host didn’t liek the name and put the source code in a folder called Linux.

Guess which name stuck.

By: Bifold Doors

Bifold Doors — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:19:00 +0000

After some years Wikipedia may be replaced by Google Knol.

By: Morten G

Morten G — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:21:00 +0000

One thing more that most Danes don’t even know – Blaatand means Dark Chief in old norse. But in modern Danish it does sound exactly like Blue Tooth.

By: Firestorm

Firestorm — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:17:00 +0000

backronym… laughed for a few on that one! cool article. thanks!

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:18:00 +0000

Emily,

Prius is not like “servus” or “alumnus;” it is not a singular masculine noun of the second declension: It’s actually a singular neuter adjective of the third declension. Since it means “earlier,” it is comparative in form and thus has the “-us” nominative ending. The plural then does become “Priora” as was stated. Consult a solid Latin dictionary for further information.

Interesting article! Thanks, Rob.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:07:00 +0000

Actually, “wiki” comes from Hawaiian pidgin, which is different from the Hawaiian language itself. Hawaiian pidgin was a lingua franca that evolved in a diverse society of speakers of English, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages. “Wiki” actually comes originally from the English word “quick” (reduplicated in pidgin to “wikiwiki”).

In Hawaiian, the Polynesian language related to Samoan, Tahitian, and Maori, the word for quick was originally “awiawi.”

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:00:00 +0000

BLUETOOTH
Actually this often-repeated account isn’t correct. It was invented retroactively to explain a blunder. I worked in the PR team that launched Bluetooth in the 1990s, and that was actually a codename given to the project which referenced Ericsson’s three slash blue logo (was my client, and the big cheese steering it all). Some smart tech journos got a whiff of what was going on, and started writing about the concept before it was officially launched, using the only name that was available to them for it – the internal code name. After the name stuck, some smart aleck in PR had to come up with a suitably narrative and lyrical justification and hence the “Norse Legend” crap