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Comment by Keverw | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me about how people don't even give CockroachDB a chance because of it's name. Every time it's mentioned on HN, people can't help but to bring up it's name.

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I think Rocky is good. CockroachDB on the other hand is an awful name. Cockroaches are only associated with filth and are revolting to most people. Plus, you got that cock in the name which isn’t helping matters. You might think it’s obnoxious that people always point out the name without considering the product but tone deaf branding is a misstep and begs the question: what else are they screwing up if they could get the brand name so utterly wrong?

Living in a non-English speaking country certainly helps. Everybody around here is using `git` without realizing what it means. Same for CockroachDB.

Many native English speakers don’t realize that ‘git’ is a slur somewhere between idiot and wanker. It’s somewhat comical how mundane the word has become in its new context.

A certain company, a few years ago, came very close to having a Global Information Technology Services department. Fortunately a few Brits made sure their voice was heard.

I think Linus knew what he was doing at the time when he created the tool :D

Ah yes, he was pissed off at the guy that typed in "help" after telneting to a BitKeeper repository, then using the docs that put out to make a clone of the client. Since he had a connection to the Linux Foundation, that caused McVoy to revoke the license for BitKeeper to the Linux community.

Requesting the name change to the more subtle “RoachDB”

Data checks in, but doesn't check out.

Ah, perfect for when you need an `INNER JOINT`.

Same happens with GIMP, it’s just not smart marketing.

in GIMP's defense, GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, whereas names as Red Hat, Ubuntu and many others are not acronyms

to be fair to red hat and ubuntu, those names don't have multiple inappropriate meanings

"multiple inappropriate meanings" to some.

Let's face it, idea for using word "gimp" probably came before they figured out what it stands for. Even now when everyone understands what that means and what consequences are behind using that word, there is still a lot of debate around that name and instead of changing it to something more marketable they are stubborn and are sticking to it. They even allow for bigger market fragmentation (Glimpse fork of GIMP) just to not change that name, that's childish.

It was named after the Pulp Fiction character.

https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/

Ironically the same badass developers

I think it is bad. You just cannot go to your manager and PR and tell them we are using CockroachDB. If you have a manager who would understand this though, then your manager still cannot go to his manager with that name.

Yeah, sounds like an awkward conversation but I know there's some huge companies using it. I guess they named it that way because cockroaches are believed to survived since the dinosaurs. I guess be the same if you named it BedBugDB, they are hard to get rid for some people too.

But I think some just dismiss it based on the name. I think if I was going to build a startup, it'd be on the top of the list for database choices only thing I really wish it had was Full Text Search and CIText but I guess those will be added some day. I think it's a neat piece of engineering though so far!

Maybe its a clever tactic to reduce usage at companies that are controlled by non-technical people that are more worried about the name than the technology. Probably has a notable effect on the number of demanding/misinformed issues that they have to deal with ;)

While you at it tell your manager how many plugins your putting in your Gimp.

I am always waiting that the splash screen of gimp writes 'the gimp is sleeping. Guess you gotta wake him up....'

But.. why did they have to name it that?

Not sure if there are solid evidence established to prove this, but Cockroaches are believed to be capable of surviving large amount of radiations (like from nuclear bomb), hence they thought it would be apt for a geographically distributed DB.

https://sciencenotes.org/can-cockroaches-survive-nuclear-bom...

I wonder if they brainstormed something like BunkerDB when deciding on a name with that in mind.

I know, but cockroaches are also considered ugly in American culture (laugh emoji)

Yeah, Cockroachdb - I don't like that name at all.

I love it... Cockroaches are survivors. When I was in grad school my lab was in a subbasement in a 100 year old building. We had huge cockroaches...

One of my colleagues caught some and put them in one of our lab freezers and forgot about them. Months later we remembered the jar... took it out of the freezer. Cockroaches thawed out and seemed to be fine... very active, almost like nothing happened.

Other experiments were performed as well... anyhow, cockroaches are hard to kill.

Diatomaceous earth is very effective at killing them. It's fascinating that they're so robust, but just a little inert powder can kill them. Though to be fair, at their scale, it may as well be a pile of razor blades.

One drop of dichloromethane does them in super fast. Their body metabolizes it into Carbon monoxide. A bit of a wake up call for those of us using dcm (our bodies do too, but less quickly)

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