Hi hackers, I'm Dian.
This all started about a month ago, when I finally started my own company! It's been long overdue, so I filed the paperworks and got a domain. But. When my friend asked me about it at Starbucks, I had to lower my head, sip some matcha, and try to hide the embarrassment of a name. That's when I knew,
I done goofed.
As it turns out, I'm not alone in my misery, and naming is a skill.
Steven Paul Jobs, yup, Steve Jobs, wanted to call the iMac ... the 'MacMan'. Issy Sharp wanted to create the 'Thunderbird Inn'. But that was taken. So he named it Four Seasons. And Phil Knight, at the very last minute, before his shoes goes into production, decided to call it Nike. Oh, what was the name he himself came up with? Dimension Six.
Imagine. Running in a pair of Dimension Six. Working on a MacMan. Or vacationing at a Thunderbird. Yuck.
So why are people bad at naming? I wanted to know how other people came up with names. Then I came across PG's essay https://paulgraham.com/name.html Two things: lack of imagination, and identity (I think its the endowment effect). And that gave me an idea, to build a tool just for naming.
Name Capy. Find a domain name you're happy with.
It's completely free! Well, until my OpenAI credits run out lol. You can try it out here:
And yes, I used it to name itself. It combined the service I'm providing, 'naming', and my love of 'capybaras'.
Let me know what you think.