Just for fun.

The early days of computing spawned some rather strange product names, and while I've only just stumbled upon this one, I though it would be interesting to see what odd or funny names others remember from the past.

The Deephaven 'Maggot 09' - Looks like it wasn't a bad spec for back in 1985.

There is a mention of it in an article here, along with the pasted advert.
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Arc ... 985-01.pdf

Perhaps a modern FPGA based 6809/FLEX system is due, let's see, what to call it.............. The Mega Maggot.

Hehe, how on earth did they come up with that name.. it looks like an interesting system though, I want one!
Good idea for a thread. I don't remember anything to contribute at the moment, but I have a feeling there're some old forgotten contenders somewhere in the back of my mind.

I think I just found it's creator over on the eevblog forum.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/your-chance-to-own-an-apple-i-(well-maybe-not-)/msg229605/#msg229605

I think it was the VIC-20 that had to be renamed for the German market, since "VIC" in that language was equivalent to one of our four-letter words that I wouldn't repeat even if I knew which one it was.

There were some names that seemed appropriate at the time, like IBM's "System 360" which with the idea of 360° was supposed to mean it could handle the entire range of everything you could ever need in computing, before it occurred to anyone that computers would later be used in cameras, entertainment, embedded control of devices so small you could put lots of them in your pocket at once, personal communications, etc..

My first computer was a VIC-20. Through magazines, I'd become aware of the German VC-20 branding, though it wasn't until much later that I learned the reasoning behind it.
The problem was in the German pronunciation, rather than the spelling, with 'F' and 'V' sounding very similar, and the German *F-Word* having an 'I' where the English spelling has 'U' (other letters being the same).

Commodore also had to change the name of the PET for the European market because Philips had the rights to the PET acronym with their "Programm-Entwicklungs-Terminal". Had this not been the case, the PET branding may have made it to France, where it would have garnered some strange looks. PET translates to FART in french.

Ah yes, I had forgotten about the PET problem in French. I speak some French (actually learned to read and write in Spanish before I did in English), but I never knew what the word meant in French.

Back in the 20th century I had a KIM-1 microcomputer which I modified extensively, creating new opcodes for flipping memory banks (all 64K at a time). Next came a more ambitious design built from scratch. Because the goals were similar I was going to name the new machine "KIM Clone," but opted for Kim Klone (or KK) instead, just to be cheesy.

Now there's a third-generation machine on the back burner. But I don't think I'll call it Kimklone Klone. That would produce the acronym KKK !

( Apologies for slipping OT from the history of computing to a machine still in the future! )

-- Jeff

Finding good names for things can be a difficult task. In a different lifetime I tried to offer a naming service for folks.

I knew someone once who would write massive amounts of inline code without subroutines because he didn’t know what to name the subroutines.


Using a version number is fairly common, it’s even used with some people’s names. How about KK2 ? for Kim Klone II ?

While 'Kimklone Klone' would probably stir up a snowstorm, it could probably slip by as K³.
In a similar play, KK2 (or Kim Klone II) could be written as K²2 or K²I², or even Cockatoo.