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Comment by karanganesan | Hacker News Reader

curious why was the name Zeit not preferred?

It's a German word and the name of one of Germany's biggest newspapers, and probably part of the name of dozens of businesses in all kinds of industries in Germany.

Using a made-up brand name is the standard way to avoid potential trademark conflicts, and at the same time be more easily findable via Google.

Yeah, not having your name instantly googleable in Germany (a big economy with a lot of developers) is probably a hindrance. Not to mention how stupid it would be to use in a sentence, imagine calling your product "Time", and a developer says e.g. "we're having issues with time.."

A lot of products sound stupid when used in a sentence before you get used to them.

We're having issues with zoom...

We're having issues with chrome...

We're having issues with word...

The less nonsensical the word in context, the more confusing it is though. Do you dispute that "we're having issues with time" is much more vague and overloaded, than "we're having issues with zoom"?

A camera developer might find "having issues with zoom" as confusing as a dev dealing with timezones finds "having issues with time". Everyone has a different context that may make your name confusing to them.

To make people wonder how you are supposed to pronounce Vercel I guess.

Like Toyota Tercel?

I guess it's like Marcel, but with a V.

Heidegger wrote Sein und Zeit and was a literal Nazi.

Nazis used the German language, surprising.

Who cares. He was a philosopher and a interesting one. That’s like not reading Ezra Pound’s poetry even though it’s some of the best of all time. American post-war propaganda did a number on you if you’re that whipped. Nietzsche (another German, oh no!) calls that the slave morality.

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