Hacker News Reader

Comment by CaptainZapp | Hacker News Reader

Not to be a spoilsport. But you may want to rethink the name.

There's a French financial software company called Murex.

Since a shell by the same name is very much computer related and I assume that they have a trademark on the name you may be in for a world of hurt, legally speaking.

View on HN

Good point. I did spend a fair amount of time deciding on a name - it's surprising just how few good names aren't already being used in OSS. So I'd love some suggestions if anyone has any.

Perhaps if you tell us how you arrived at murex?

The process isn't that interesting to be honest. I just used a crossword solver to find all the English words ending with "sh" and then Googled them to see if projects already existed.

Then I Googled different types of shells in nature to look for something that sounded interesting. That's where 'murex' came up, it's a genus of a sea snails and it also loosely followed the UNIX naming convention (Linux / Unix / Minix / etc).

I guess I could have just made a word up rather than trying to be clever :)

I like the name 'murex'. The first thing it makes me think of is murex shells - as in the sea snail - which we used to find on the beach all the time when I was a kid. And as you say the 'X' at the end conjures up Unix.

Ah, that's nice!

I really hate the to be the bearer of bad news, but it would really suck to invest a lot of work and when your product gets popular (and visible) to get sued.

Naming is hard, but how about something like MXShell ?

That's, of course, if it makes sense.

Edited to add: There seems to be an instagram account by that name and a Twitch streamer. Else then that I can't find much with a cursery Google search.

I genuinely appreciate the feedback. I was hoping there was enough distance between this project and the French firm but I'd stupidly not considered that they'd trademark their name.

It's not a household name, but it's a fairly large, privately held, company with a significant reference list.

They have a web site, if you want to check them out.

Or mrx shell for short, and it gets pronounced 'Murex' so people can debate about it for years to come, much like gif is either Jiff or Geef.

Those are fairly distinct areas, though. If ios can be shared by Apple and Cisco, I think you're good.

If you are prepared to be sued.

Cisco did sue Apple over the trademark for iPhone[1]. When Apple later used the name iOS they came to a private agreement with Cisco[2]. If they just used the same name without coming to terms with Cisco, they surely would have been sued again.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-cisco-settle-iphone-trademar...

[2] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_io...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com