Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzaman | Hacker News Reader

Not judging the book by it's cover, but MariaDB doesn't do the DB any justice with this crappy name.

yeah, they should've chosen something more pronounceable, like "PostgreSQL" </sarcasm> ...seriously now, the only db with a "decent" name (easy to pronounce, nice sounding and actually meaningful) is Oracle, and maybe this was a reason for their success.

I don't think Oracle is the easiest to pronounce because of the c + l. There are certainly better names. DB2 is a simple one. Nothing fancy of fuzzy about it.

If you want a word then, how about Firebird.

"Firebird" is non-trivial outside of english and it doesn't mean anything. Most European languages at least have a word that not only sounds a bit like "Oracle" but also means the same thing.

I agree that DB2 is fairly simple and to the point.

> "Firebird" is non-trivial outside of english

What? I can imagine it is in a few languages, but not in any where "Oracle" is trivial.

And it does have a meaning, even if it isn't related to databases. "Oracle" is a bit clever that way.

cl in Spanish (clave), French (clef), Italian (, Catalan (clau), etc is a trivial pronunciation if is pronounced not like an English word. And the English pronunciation (kel) is even easier

Firebird is complicated.

By the way, oracle in Catalan or French is oracle

How about BigTable ? Since it's uhm essentially a big table.

When is DB3 coming out?

Yeah, it's better than Oracle, but I forgot about it because I haven't heard of anyone using it recently? Btw, who uses Firebird and what does it have over Postgres, SQLServer or Oracle?

What's wrong with the name?

Both MariaDB and MySQL are named after Monty's daughters. He has a daughter named Maria and a daughter named My.

As opposed to MySql? Sounds like sound kind of toy database.

The nice thing is that they are just named after Monty's kids, from what I remember from an interview on FLOSS weekly.

Oh, I get it! Is it "MySQL" -> "my sequel" -> "my child" -> "Maria"? That's quite clever! :)

You're over thinking things. :) He literally has a daughter named "My" and another daughter called "Maria".

> "my sequel" -> "my child"

Ha! Never thought of that. But it is simpler than that. His daughters are named My and Maria.

Oh, darnit! :) Thanks, though.

Ya, I don't like the name either, I think he named it after his kid?

Yes, well, he named MySQL after a daughter called My, too.

GreenPlum is plenty successful. I doubt the name matters too much.

iOS, iPad, iPod, iMac, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, Cybershot, Vista, Wii (children smirk), XBoxOne (didn't we have an XBox 1?), are all pretty shitty names. I can even remember thinking that Google was a toy name when I first heard it. So doesn't matter that much - over time you ignore them. On the flip side, I loved the name Bing until MS used it, I feel uneasy each time I hear it.

Dude, I have to ask, what is NOT a shitty name in your world?

I think some of those brand names were pretty good (the original XBox, iPod too).

Good question - sorry to come over as negative! Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, XBox (I only think the new name is misleading), Playstation (though it does sound like a childs play area - which I guess it is...), Oracle, Sun, Apple, Mac (this one is weird, Macintosh??, the abbreviation is short for friend or nice drink), Trillian, Xerox (a bit dated - but different), Knoppix, Debian (I like name inspired ones), OCP, Acorn, MSX (original XBox?), Dragon, Spectrum, Spectre, OpenSource, Ubuntu, Redhat/Fedora, Suse (brain is struggling now), Hobnob, Jaffacake, Pathe, Universal, Pegasus, Mercury messenger, Kindle, Nook, Monster Munch, Twiglets, Suma, Pot noodle, Marmite, Oat Crunchies, Audi, Honda, Kia, Lotus, Epic, The Who, The Fall, The The - sure there are loads more, but can't think of them off the top of my head.

(I guess it was clever of Flickr, to do something at least different, but the other web2.0 wannabe names feel like second rate copy cats.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com