Any advice on how to come up with a good name for a project? I’ve found that artists are much better than engineers at this, but I don’t know many artists.

I'm more of an artist than an engineer, but I suck at naming. I usually just play around in a dictionary and thesaurus looking for words that seem appropriate, short, and are not already taken.

you can start there and then play with a domain search engine to see what's available and introduce changes in the name until you find something 😛

Wiktionary is good for that, I've found.

This article is pretty good https://blog.pieratt.com/post/77293289254/a-3-step-process-for-naming-a-projectproduct

I tend to pick a random object that's entered into or been noticed in my life recently (this morning:

quill

). has no meaning. then I pick a better name once the project has picked up some identity of its own

Lately I like to codename my projects with Japanese onomatopoeias and then hope I come up with a better name upon release. Having a go-to stock of unique names like this is nice for when you just want to give it a name(kinda like how Apple named OSX releases after big cats). Fictional characters and locations can also be a good source of names.

i aim for a feeling rather than a functional description first—most functional descriptions are bad when you initially think of them and already taken by a yc company. if you can find an evocative phrase or two-word pairing you can riff on it pretty easily and test alternatives in my experience

Thanks to everyone that replied. I gave some of the suggestions here a shot the other day and came up with the name “STRVCT” (short for structured editor). Any thoughts on this name? Good enough to be more than a codename? Is the V too weird?

Replacing U with V was most recently at the peak of fashion in 2011-ish, and fell out of fashion around 2015, by my reckon. Not sure if that matters to you, but it is something that some people pay attention to as a signifier.

it was also pretty popular ca. Roman Empire

On the good side, all the major domains were available. I snagged them and put up a placeholder on http://strvct.net

@Alex Ellis At first my message didn't include "most recently", but then I went back and added that before posting because I had a vague recollection.

the only note i would have is that srvct is hard to pronounce out loud—which may or may not matter depending on the distribution mechanism you plan on using

You'd pronounce it the same as "struct", right Steve?

right but in the sense of getting someone to try it out i think it’s more like “struct-with-a-vee-not-a-u”

Yeah, it’s pronounced “struct”. I agree that the V is awkward to describe :/

Bob Taylor on prototype names