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by Jamis Buck.
Original Post: SwitchTower: Renamed
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After a pretty wild 72 hours of brainstorming, googling, and searching through registered trademarks via the USPTO, a winner has emerged in the search for a name for the software formerly known as SwitchTower.
marcel: name idea
marcel: Capistrano
marcel: as in, the swallows of Capistrano
marcel: http://www.sanjuancapistrano.net/swallows/
The name clicked for me right off, but at the time I wasn’t making any real judgement calls regarding the names—I was just adding them to a great big list.
By late Saturday, we had several names that we really liked. My wife had suggested “Roundabout”, which won the heart of many on the core team, but unfortunately was already a registered trademark. Other names we liked, but which had to be discarded were “Switchyard”, “Metro”, “Sherpa”, and “Remote Control”. We rapidly discovered that the descriptive names were already trademarked. We considered various others from the railroad theme, but decided it was being overused, and we also wanted to emphasize that this software was really independent of Rails.
Tobias Lütke really liked “Reploy”, but it felt awkward to me. Scott Barron suggested both “Deployinator” and “Vlad the Deployer”, the latter of which I really liked, but couldn’t picture showing up on the cover of a book. (“Agile Web Deployment with Vlad the Deployer”...)
Several of us liked the name “Sherpa” enough to try looking for alternative ideas related to that theme. “Porter”, “envoy”, and the like were all considered. I took quite a shining to “Pemba”, which is apparently the traditional given name for Sherpa males born on Saturday. It also happens to be Chad Fowler’s Tibetan name, given to him by a Tibetan monk. From that association, I added “Chad” as a possible name for the program, and Marcel promptly found a t-shirt proclaiming “Chad is Rad.” Wouldn’t it be great to have a ready-made shirt for this thing?
Eventually, I made an executive decision and narrowed the list down to “Pemba”, and “Capistrano”. Putting it to the core team:
Jamis B.
ok, if you had to choose between “Capistrano” and “Pemba” for the new ST name, which would you choose?
Rick O.
capistrano
David H.
capistrano
Nicholas S.
+1
Jamis B.
ok, anyone have any significant issues with “capistrano”? I’m willing to work on this for up to 6 more hours before I make a decision.
(personally, I really like capistrano)
Nicholas S.
makes me want a meat sandwhich
Tobias L.
that name is vastly undescriptive for what it does
Jamis B.
at this point, that is the least of my worries
all the descriptive names are either taken, or too awkward (IMO)
Tobias L.
you can’t use it as verb either really
Jamis B.
“cap it”
David H.
haha ;)
Jamis B.
you couldn’t use ST as a verb, either, really
Tobias L.
hm that works
David H.
Descriptive names are overrated
Jamis B.
agreed
they’re also all trademarked ;)
so I’m perhaps just suffering from SGS
(Sour Grapes Syndrome)
Thomas F.
you could call it “PDI” (program deployment initiative or so).
Tobias L.
hahaahaha!!!
Jamis B.
clever ;)
Thomas F.
but if it works as well as it does, it really doesn’t matter.
Jamis B.
my question really is: is there anyone here that could not live with ST being called “capistrano”?
Tobias L.
I like Sour Grape ;0
Jamis B.
I’m sure I’ll get bombarded by complaints, no matter what I call it
haha :)
David H.
I say go on capistrano
It’s a destination for the train ;)
All rails goes to capistrano
Jamis B.
haha! I like that
“All rails go to capistrano” is a really nice hook ;)
Tobias L.
well i’m bikeshedding, capistrano is a disitinct and unique name
Jamis B.
frankly, nothing clicks for me like “SwitchTower” does, but I do really like the sound of “capistrano”
casually sophisticated
pleasant
refreshing
anyway, capistrano it is
Tobias L.
it sounds like a coctail at a beach bar though
Jamis B.
that too ;)
Thomas F.
mmh, cocktails. :)
Jamis B.
I’ll announce the name change tonight and start refactoring all references
Thomas F.
“I’ve a quick rails app, and a capistrano to go with that”
Jamis B.
hahaha
Tobias L.
/me whispers reploy into his beard
So, Capistrano it is. I’ll be going through and changing all references I can find and control from SwitchTower to Capistrano over the next day or two.
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