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Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Hermes for a digital packet manager will be OK because Hermes is also a company offering packet and parcel delivery and related online services.

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And since they're often late, tend to lose, misdirect or damage packages ... I'm not sure it's a good choice even if there's no legal issue or the company okays it.

Hermes is also far more (?) obviously the Greek messenger of the gods, so any negative associations with an existing company (that AFAICT doesn't even deal with digital products) shouldn't be relevant.

But both are package managers.

But only one in a literal sense and the other one is just a metaphor. They are very different things. Sure, they have in common the logistics of bundling things together in units and bringing them on track. But the same applies for kindergartens.

Hermes is the Greek god of commerce, the marketplace, and thieves. He is also the ultra-rapid messenger of the gods. His duties also involve guiding souls of the deceased into the next world.

His name and/or image pops up a lot in the context of businesses working in one of those domains. Flower delivery, bicycle couriers, airlines, PayPal's external merchant flow... anything you want to be speedy. Not so much in his role as a guide of the dead that I now of, though maybe there's a lot of companies in the death industries that invoke him.

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